Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products
This books attempts to introduce agile ideas to product development. At the same time it is trying to package agile principles for an enterprise environment. I see definite benefit for a project manager attempting to encourage a large product development company to adopt an evolutionary approach.
There is good coverage of giving teams responsible for new delivery the space the explore the problem. A large part of a project manager’s role is to protect the team from the external pressures so they can deliver on the needs. The counter-intuitive notion that reducing the daily push for progress gives better long term achievement.
A section on the needs of executives is insightful, that when performing novel development what is required is reliability not repeatability. You need to focus on the outputs of a process and allow the team members the authority to figure out how to provide this to you. This can range from the device or software itself to the supporting materials for a complete product delivery.
Confusion about reliable and repeatable has caused many organizations to pursue repeatable processes—very structured and precise—when exactly the opposite approach—mildly structured and flexible—works astonishingly better for new product and service development. If your goal is to deliver a product that meets a known and unchanging specification, then try a repeatable process. However, if your goal is to deliver a valuable product to a customer within some targeted boundaries, when change and deadlines are significant factors, then reliable processes work better.
Good but a bit too enterprise for my taste.