Recently, a client ran into a roadblock…a major roadblock! For several months I had petitioned and warned leadership that investing the right talent to deliver results was putting the project at risk. However, no action was taken.
Essentially leadership took out a one year ARM hoping that they could deliver before the interest rate reset…i.e. team members to be repurposed towards other portfolio priorities. However, with the lack of the right talent the project made little progress. Month after month, the talent deficit accumulated into real project debt – software architecture, engineering disciplines, and team morale suffered tremendously.
Now management and the business are expecting the payment to come due(delivery). However they sub-primed the the project. With the expected due date coming up we’ll either need to refinance the project(add more time and/or resources) or foreclose.
So what? Irregardless of your process(Agile or not), when bootstrapping your projects, set your projects up for success. Put a solid down payment down to invest in realizing the project vision. Also, throughout the project lifecycle, actively engage the business and IT management…i.e. the decision makers. Transparency and active participation from stakeholders are key to Agile project success. Use this case study as an example where consistently disengaged decision makers caused project failure because they were unwilling to have the courage to make tough choices when the clear path to success was staring them in the face.
Reminds me of this sad Agile PM video: goo.gl/jYSWB
