White Paper: Using an Agile Project Charter to Guide Your Most Complex Projects by Scott Barber Principal Consultant GP Strategies
Introduction Agility is a word you ll hear a lot in business circles. To many, it simply means the flexibility to adjust to developing situations. But in recent years, the term Agile project has been coming up more frequently, especially in the training world. What does it really mean? The idea of Agile projects began in the software development industry in response to complex projects where there was a high level of uncertainty, shifting requirements, or the potential for misalignment between what the customer expected and what was delivered. Simply stated, Agile projects are predicated on the concept that you know less about a project when it begins than you will ever know about it in the future. So instead of adhering to an airtight plan written before the project even gets started, Agile projects embrace openness, exploit continuous improvement, and provide solid techniques to manage uncertainty and risk. They also provide more efficient and effective ways to approach complex projects and often result in improved customer satisfaction. The Agile philosophy is outlined in the Agile Manifesto 1, edited here from its use in the software industry for use in the training industry: We are uncovering better ways of improving organizational performance by focusing on employee performance outcomes. Through this work, we have come to value: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Meaningful business performance over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. The results of using traditional project management methods on a complex training project are familiar to those who have worked on them. Some projects may run late and run over budget; the employees on the project may work nights and weekends to catch up; most of the value of the project may only be delivered only at the very end of the project; or what is delivered to the customer may not meet their expectations. Any or all of these are not the result of the people working on the project or even unrealistic expectations on the part of the customer. These types of issues are a result of the assumption that traditional project management is always appropriate for knowledge workers engaged in a creative effort. The Agile philosophy provides a better path. Agile projects differentiate from traditional approaches by not assuming the exact end state and the process to get to the end state is known at the beginning of a project. While all aspects are important, the interests of people both those working on a project and those who benefit from the project are considered to be more important than the technical aspects of a project. Agile projects are more about servant leadership, not management and administration. In addition, better projects are realized through collaborating, embracing change, continuously improving, and focusing on making a meaningful impact rather than on spreadsheets, Gantt charts, or contracts. A striking example of this can be seen in the guiding document for Agile projects: the project charter. GP Strategies Corporation 1
Build a framework for your project with an Agile project charter. An Agile project charter is a simple, one-page document created at the beginning of an Agile project that guides a project team in achieving the intended results of the project. It consists of three items: the project s vision, mission statement, and success criteria. A good project charter corresponds with the Golden Circle, described by Simon Sinek as a technique where an organization determines the why, how, and what of the organization in order to promote great leadership. Instead of promoting leadership, however, Agile project charters are created in order to promote great projects. In its simplest form, an Agile project charter states, In order to achieve our project goal (vision), the team will work together in a certain way (mission statement), and expect these outcomes (success criteria). An Agile project charter is created by mutual agreement of the project team, and is referred to and modified by the project team throughout the life of the project. Let s take a closer look at the three defining elements of a charter. Vision A good Agile charter vision is simple, a call to action, and describes the value proposition of the project. It does not contain business jargon, technical terms, or meaningless or generic phrases. In terms of the Golden Circle, it answers the question, Why is the team doing this project? This vision is then used to align the internal team and external stakeholders on the project s purpose. Not meeting these criteria can be problematic. For example, the following is a modified example of an ineffective vision statement encountered at the beginning of a previous software implementation project: The X project collaboratively aligns the IT project expenses with the strategy of the company. The implementation of the software by the project will assist in making data-driven decisions to better understand resource requirements and the larger IT portfolio. The ultimate result will be to decrease delivery times and realizes long-term benefits in a shorter time frame. This vision was ineffective for several reasons. The vision was not simple and required a lot of parsing in order to understand it. Most people did not bother to read the statement at more than a superficial level, or if they read it, they promptly forgot it. Further, some of the statements in the vision were so non-specific that they were meaningless. Some of the texts, for example, making data-driven decisions, were poor examples of a call to action. The result of this poorly written vision was a lack of internal and external unity on or about the project, as no one could adequately describe why the project was being attempted. The challenge then issued to the change management team was to come up with a vision that was short, described the value of the project, and was easily communicated. This vision would in turn become the consistent message to talk about the project both internally and externally. After meeting and hashing out several possibilities, the vision of the project became: Drive and deliver high-value projects. In another example from a different client, the vision the team created was: What? Create an innovative and flexible SAP Extended Warehouse Management (EWM) training solution for warehouse workers in Paris, France and for workers in future implementations. Both of these visions answer the why question and enabled project team members to talk about the purpose of a project at a high level. Externally, the vision was the elevator pitch used to initiate larger conversations with stakeholders. Internally, the vision helped the team focus on the creation of value for the project. If activities the team was contemplating helped make the vision a reality, the team did them. Conversely, if contemplated activities did not add value by helping realize the vision, the team either abandoned them or deprioritized them. This is an important concept in Agile, as the focus of an Agile project is to create customer value in the most efficient manner possible. A solid vision is critical in doing that. How? Why? Vision Mission Statement Success Criteria The elements of a project charter within the Golden Circle GP Strategies Corporation 2
Mission Statement The next question, which corresponds to the middle layer of the Golden Circle, is the how question. More specifically, How will the team work together to achieve this vision? The answer to this question becomes the mission statement for the project charter. This part of the project charter is the most important section when it comes to describing how a project team will embrace the Agile philosophy. For example, in Scrum, an Agile project management framework, the core project team has all of the responsibility for decisionmaking. That decision-making is divided between the product owner, who decides the priority of project outcomes, and the development team, who decides how those outcomes will be achieved. A Scrum Master may coach the team and influence the mission statement (with an eye towards the lightweight project management rules that make up Scrum), but it is up to the product owner and development team to decide how the team will collaborate to achieve results. In a recent Agile training project, the mission statement crafted was: The team will work collaboratively with each other, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders. To achieve the best possible work, we will: Make decisions about the project together, with the product owner primarily responsible for setting work priorities and the development team primarily responsible for determining how the work is performed. Communicate daily about progress and barriers. Collaborate and provide feedback in real-time, not by e-mail, whenever possible. Perform work in established time boxes using a schedule of planning meeting, work period, review meeting, and lessons learned meeting. Determine what work is ready for the next period prior to the planning meeting. As a team, decide the definition of ready and done for each deliverable. One of the keys to success of an Agile team is process improvement, which leads to changes in the mission statement. During every sprint retrospective (held the end of every two to four-week work period); an Agile team discusses three items: what the team should continue doing, what the team should stop doing, and what the team should start doing. The team then develops an action plan that may involve new work rules. The mission statement of the project charter is then updated accordingly. Success Criteria When an Agile team works for a specified purpose in the agreed-upon manner, specific outcomes are attained. The success criteria in the project charter describe these specific and measurable outcomes. In terms of the Golden Circle, success criteria describe what the project will achieve. These items are focused on the value delivered to the customer. They are not necessarily objects that are created (where the value is inferred), but rather describe the explicit value of real-world outcomes. For example, a project success criterion could be: The project will create 10 hours of delivered elearning. A better project success criterion is: Students will be able to successfully pick, pack, and ship a customer order within 2 hours of that order using the new warehouse management system. As you can see, the second statement focuses on the real-world outcome of the 10 hours of learning the outcome the client most wants to achieve. It s also a more compelling goal for the Agile team to get behind and has specific details of the outcome without becoming as specific as to lose its Agile bearings. GP Strategies Corporation 3
Know when to use an Agile project charter effectively. Agile projects benefit from a solid project charter when they have a strong and clear vision of a future state, define the rules by which the team will be Agile, and focus on the outcomes that deliver the most value to the customer. In addition, Agile teams engage in continuous improvement. The project charter is an important (and simple) artifact where those improvements are documented and shared with both the internal Agile team and other interested stakeholders. It is the roadmap by which the overall success of an Agile project is accomplished. But there are times when using traditional methodologies and approaches are better. When the project is simple or easy to define, or when the team already knows everything that should be included, such as with a simple corporate policy class, traditional approaches are preferred. An Agile methodology is at its best when used for complex projects. Over 20 years ago, Agile methodologies transformed the software development industry and now they are doing the same for the training industry. More and more professionals are discovering the answer to being more effective on complex projects is not to have more management, more documentation, more rules, and a mindset that you can plan for every eventuality before a project even begins. Complex projects bring new insights and new approaches throughout the lifecycle. As Agile coach Mike James says, Today is the dumbest day of the rest of our project. 2 Agile project teams realize this and operate accordingly, using a good project charter to guide the team s way. About the Author Scott Barber has over 15 years of experience in training and performance and has been an instructor, lecturer, instructional designer, and project manager for a wide range of training and performance solutions in multiple industry segments. Most recently, one of Scott s projects that used Agile methods was awarded a 2015 Brandon Hall silver medal for Best Improvement for Custom Content. Scott is a Certified Scrum Master and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Liberty University. For more information contact Scott Barber Principal Consultant GP Strategies sbarber@gpstrategies.com Notes: 1 Beck, K., Beedle, M., van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M.,... Thomas, D. (2001). Manifesto for Agile software development. Retrieved from www.agilemanifesto.org 2 James, M. (nd). Introduction to Scrum. Retrieved from http://scrumtrainingseries.com/intro_to_scrum/intro_to_scrum.htm GP Strategies World Headquarters 70 Corporate Center 11000 Broken Land Parkway, Suite 200 Columbia, MD 21044 USA gpstrategies.com 1.888.843.4784 info@gpstrategies.com 2016 GP Strategies Corporation. All rights reserved. GP Strategies and GP Strategies with logo design are registered trademarks of GP Strategies Corporation. All other trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Ref. Code: WP-Agile Project Charter SBarber 8.10.16.indd