3 Strikes, You’re Out

Home
[ Login/Subscribe ] 
Features Departments PPM Tools Executive Report Resources About Us

Home  >  Features  >  Case Studies
3 Strikes, You’re Out
Michael Mah   (January 29, 2009)




When you’re operating in an Agile environment — or any other software development scenario, for that matter — three factors almost always make the difference between success and failure: domain knowledge, dialogue and deadline pressure. Here, Cutter Consortium consultant and researcher Michael Mah presents his anatomy of a failed project.

In a recent presentation, I shared my observations about five companies implementing Agile methods. There is a slide in the deck that shows an image of the human brain with the words "Domain Knowledge" next to another image of cartoon talking heads, with the word "Dialogue." The slide summarizes a distinct difference among the five companies I examined — their degree of success or failure could be traced to how well or poorly they handled two critical attributes: domain knowledge and dialogue.
 
Among these five agile case studies, two of the companies could be considered “poster children” for productivity and quality; others had mixed success. But it may be most helpful to consider a project that failed.
 
In this example, the company brought in a new team in an attempt to bring a new medical IT application to market. These new developers were learning about this product and its features for the very first time.



Please login/register to read the entire article.





Sponsored Announcements and Special Offers
Clarizen Project Management Software allows businesses to easily manage all of their work, projects, resources and budgets in a single, simple to use online environment. Clarizen’s work management tools facilitate team collaboration and project execution, ensuring data is always up-to-date and aligned with business objectives. Sign up for your 30-Day Free Trial TODAY!

New On-Demand Webinar "Driving Product Strategy From The Top Down". If you manage or are involved with project and product decisions for multiple products, this webcast will provide practical insights and tools to make your job easier. Learn how multiple projects "fit" together, the value customers receive from a portfolio approach, and successful methods in PPM tools. Learn best-practices, communicating strategy, what to consider when making multiple product decisions.

You hear about them in trade journals, boardrooms and the PR of your competitors. What are smarter products and how does your organization make them better than your competition? Learn how-to turn product development in competitive advantage. This new IBM whitepaper explores the best practices for product development and highlights essential techniques to be employed to build/ drive innovative technologies.

How can your company increase efficiency and maintain a competitive advantage in the PM marketplace? Learn how Oracle's Primavera project portfolio management solutions can help your organization succeed in these tough economic times. This free whitepaper paper highlights important elements and benefits of standardizing business processes and how PPM can help your business and technology succeed throughout the company.




Clarizen
IBM
Jama Software
Keller Graduate School
Management Concepts
Microsoft
Oracle
PMI
PM War Stories
PowerSteering Software
PPM Executive Newsletter
RMC Project Mgmt
Stanford University

February 2010:

How much do your tools, processes and PMO help or hinder you?



Copyright © 2010 projects@work  All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy    Contact Us    User Agreement