“But you have to watch the flip side as well,” says O’Loughlin, “and I think people miss this sometimes with Agile — it is all too easy to add on costs, precisely because you can be flexible and adaptable. That is part of the reason why it is a good idea — even essential — to have a discretionary element in the budget, say 10%, for changes where the value is clearly seen. But you could burn through that in the first few months. So it is important to have clear governance structures around the Agile approach, ensuring that each step contributes to value in the project outcome.”
O’Loughlin emphasises that ICT project flexibility is not the prerogative of Agile. “PRINCE 2 can be agile and in fact there is a version specifically for Agile coming to the market. It will mean you are still using the disciplines of that methodology but with smaller, incremental ‘chunks’ and in fact defining very small pieces of work — ‘sprints,’ in Agile terminology, which are reviewed immediately.”
The trend towards an Agile approach is taking place in a skills environment where there has been a significant increase in PMI and PRINCE 2 certification in recent years in Ireland, he says. “During the recession, with clients being very cautious, certification became and still is an essential client requirement as part of quality assurance. Now that things are picking up, there is — if not a skills shortage — some indication that the skills supply at project manager level is being stretched. Which is of course a positive sign for health of the ICT sector.”
There is a persistent misconception that ITIL and PRINCE are quite rigid structures. They are not and the philosophy behind both has always been to adopt and adapt to the situation, taking in risk management, Philip Hearsum, AXELOS
Persistent misconception
Philip Hearsum is currently ITSM portfolio manager for AXELOS, the UK joint venture set up earlier this year between the UK government and Capita plc to manage and provide training in best practice, in methodologies formerly owned by the Office of Government Commerce. “There is a persistent misconception that both ITIL and PRINCE are quite rigid structures. They are not and the philosophy behind both has always been to adopt and adapt to the situation, taking in risk management. We are now producing in our project and programme management portfolio the PRINCE 2 and Agile best practice guide and qualification specifically to show how they can cohabit and work together.”
He points out that Axelos has retained the award-winning Agile guru Keith Richards of agileKRC as lead author. “Richards pointed out at the recent ITSMF conference that he always knew that they fitted together but was surprised at how easily the two approaches combined in practice. In some degree that is because PRINCE 2 is not a waterfall but more a set of stages. So if you adapt those stages to become Agile ‘scrums’ it actually fits together quite nicely.”
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