On Tuesday evening, addressing an attendance of members and friends of the Project Management Institute (PMI) Luxembourg Chapter, Jas Madhur, Luxembourg’s Chapter Finance Director, and a lifetime proponent of agility for innovation, spoke about how disciplined agile emerged as a way out of chaotic and risky software development.
Sponsored by AgilePartner and Lux-Advisory, the evening was dedicated to “Agile Delivery” in software development projects. Over 100 people registered and 60 participants attended to discover what “agile delivery” is, to critically assess it or to have their more specific questions answered.
Project management, even in its newest incarnation - the ‘agile’ one - is all about common sense, about doing the right things the right way, about taking small steps and doing the important things first.
Software development has been around for over half a century now, and it is difficult to pinpoint specific methodological improvements, but some trends do establish themselves. The Agile approach has become a household name in recent years, in particular after the 2001 “Agile Manifesto”. The project managers present had the chance to learn about the latest developments in the field directly from Canadian, Scott Ambler, the father of “Disciplined Agile Delivery” or “DAD”.
While software development has its own methodology, and the agile way has an impressive jargon, most of the things said could be applicable to any project: 96% of the teams said they have frequent interaction with people outside the team - the team is no longer a world in itself, but it exists in a larger universe. The DAD process framework promotes the ideas that team members should collaborate closely and learn from each other, that the team should invest effort to learn from their experiences and evolve their approach, and that individuals should do so as well.
As Scott Ambler said, you will never find a simple answer in software development, because it is a complex world. And we wouldn’t want it any other way, given how much of our world is kept safe today by software - from the phones we use to the planes we fly in.
