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Adapting Over Conforming

Plans aren’t sacrosanct — they’re meant to be flexible guides, not straightjackets. Agile project leaders focus on adapting to inevitable changes rather than opposing them. In this way, value and quality are the end goals and the plan becomes a means to achieve them, not the goal itself.

Jim Highsmith
 
Look at the definition of “success” from the Standish Group, which has published success (and failure) rates of software projects over a long period of time. Success, per the Standish Group, is “the project is completed on time and on budget, with all the features and functions originally specified.” This is not a value-based definition but a constraint-based one. Using this definition, then, project managers focus on following the plan with minimal changes. Colleague Rob Austin would classify this as a dysfunctional measurement — one that leads to the opposite behavior of what was intended.
 
When customer value and quality are the …

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