About it all



Welcome.

I hope the articles here pose questions and provide some useful answers relevant to the way you go about your project management, problem solving or business change activities.

My experiences across a wide range of domains and different sized entities with very different degrees of definition and consistency of delivery and change processes has provided fertile grounds for ideas about how to improve the chances of project success without simply defaulting to a simple list of do and don't accepted practices.

Business environments, personalities, abundance or scarcity of money and time have a great impact on how your project can be run and the choices available to you in choosing your approach irrespective of your knowledge. Generally, many of these process challenges can be overcome with a little off-piste thinking or the timely incremental application of conventional processes to inconsistent activities.

Many of my project discussions use comparisons with PRINCE2 or articulate the processes used by it. This is because I have found it to be highly flexible and suitable for all project types in all domains I have applied it, including in combination with Agile. The name "theagileprince" draws on the approaches of Agile and PRINCE2 and not the genetic pre-disposition  of an hereditary ruler. In some articles I seek to articulate the synergy between these two diametric approaches, but to simply seek to justify this train of thought would provide only part of the picture.

I also devote a bit of text to discussing what I perceive are the merits and flaws of Agile. Any criticisms are not intended to diminish the methodology but rather raise questions, and provide some answers, that may confront those new to it. This will hopefully enable you to spend more time perfecting your approach and less fighting fires. I have used and implemented Agile in business activities, and whilst no evangelist for it, have experienced first-hand many of its benefits.

Therefore, in the blue corner representing a 'kind of waterfall' is PRINCE2, though when applied correctly it does not meet the criteria for an inflexible waterfall method. In the red corner, representing iterative development, is what was up until recently flavour of the month Agile. Agile has not regressed from what it ever was, I say it is no longer flavour of the month as the hype-days are passed as it grows ever more mainstream.

Whatever works for you, it is important to make repeatable the pathway from good intention to good implementation, and you may get an odd nugget here that take you closer to doing so.

Thanks again!

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