A guest post by Mark Fromson

One of the big divides in project management is between the Agile approach popular in many internal software development projects and the older waterfall approach.

It’s funny, but when you ask Digital Project Managers (DPMs) if their projects use agile or waterfall, many say they use agile. But an agile project, by strict definition, isn’t supposed to have a Project Manager (PM). An agile project is supposed to have a rotating SCRUM master. That is a role taken on in that particular sprint by a contributing member of the team, usually a developer. So where’s the disconnect here? How can so many DPM’s manage agile projects when agile can’t by definition have a PM?

The answer is complicated of course, but you’ll almost always find that a strict version of agile isn’t actually being used. The process is more often a hybrid combination of waterfall and agile that some call ‘agifall’ others call ‘agency agile.’ The reason agile isn’t being used usually comes down to two main factors:

1. There is an outside client. It’s not an internal project. The contract and client management issues require a waterfall process.

2. The project is just too big, with too many moving parts, for agile to be used.

Strict agile just doesn’t work well for a vendor-client relationship on a complicated project. Throw a paying client that is not part of your company in the mix and the dynamic changes. Client contracts and fixed-bids mean the scope has to be strictly defined and this is often done up front, as a separate project or before the project is contracted. The project scope and schedule can’t be adjusted on the whims of the team and the client.

There’s are often many more players involved. There can be third parties to coordinate, development, design and user experience team members may come from different vendor and there can be multiple client decision makers. This leads to all sorts of pressures that a small internal team doesn’t get exposed to. This is where a PM is required. It takes a lot of attention to manage all those moving parts effectively. Have you ever seen a developer try and negotiate scope with an irate client CEO, or coordinate four contributing vendors all with different expectations? It’s not pretty :-)

So how has the process landscape adapted? In agifall the best of waterfall and the best of agile are combined in a hybrid approach that works for complicated projects with paying clients and large teams. Some basic agifall methods include:

• Breaking the project into waterfall like phases to allow for fixed-bid contracting and defined scope of each smaller phase.

• Managing those phases with agile techniques like:

  • Rapid prototyping, where agile like changes can be made much more easily without causing an increase in time and budget.

  • Atomic design, where design elements are broken out into smaller parts that can be assembled later into larger pieces.

  • Story construction for all project tasks for all the project participants (rather than detailed waterfall list specifications or only development-centric stories).

• Having the paying client agree to a story point methodology of scope. What this means is that the client agrees to pay for a finite number of story points, rather than a defined functional scope. Say it’s 100 story points. Then when the stories for the project are written, they are each given a number of points based on perceived effort. The client is told that they need to help choose and prioritize which stories get done that add up to 100 story points. Any more, and it’s understood that they need to pay more and it will take longer. Even in a perfect world this is always a challenge to manage. But with an understanding and educated client who’s bought into this approach, it can work very well.

I look forward to your thoughts on other issues that are challenging digital project management and forcing it to adapt. If you’re local here in Vancouver I invite you to come out to our Vancouver Digital Project Management Meetup group. You can find us at http://www.meetup.com/Vancouver-Digital-Project-Managers/.

Mark Fromson is the co-founder of LocalSolo.com, a convenient place for agencies, startups and businesses to find local and available high-quality freelance professionals.

Mark is also a freelance digital consultant specializing in digital project management, user experience and functional analysis. With more than 15 years experience garnered at top interactive agencies in the US and Canada, he has played roles in over 400 projects for over 150 clients in multiple industry verticals. You can find him at Fromsonconsulting.com.

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