Tag: english

The conversation with Scott Ambler, co-creator of Disciplined Agile (DA), driven by Weronika Makać and Jan Orłowski. At the end of July 2022, you officially left the role of Vice President and Chief Scientist of Disciplined Agile at the Project Management Institute. Can you explain to us why you and Mark made this decision? We started on August 1, 2019, when PMI purchased our organization. Contrary to popular belief, there was no agreement in our contract to stay for these three years, only for a minimum of 90 days. 3 years is a lot of time and we stayed that time because we believe in the PMI mission and a lot of good things happened here.

An interview with Dr. Bruno Paul Kahne, trainer, facilitator and responsible of the strategy of Airbus Leadership University. By Paulina Szczepaniak and Łukasz Paluszkiewicz Bruno, you’re talking on communication, and what project managers can learn from the Deaf community. It is a very unusual idea. Could you tell us, where it came from? I am a trainer on different topics, including communication. I’ve developed a course on communication using communication models, theories, some games and experimentations. And it was good. People were coming to the course, and they were happy, they were progressing. But one day the sponsor of this course approached me and said he was not happy with the training. I asked him “Why?” He replied that it was not fun enough. Well, I’m not entertainer, I’m a trainer. I am ready to make some efforts, but then the people coming to the course also need to make some efforts. I asked him if he had any concrete recommendation, but he was just critical for the sake of it. So we left in total disagreement. This is the first part of the story.

A conversation with Nader K. Rad, one of the PMBOK® Guide, 7th Ed. developers, by Kornelia Trzęsowska. How did you get into the project management world? What is your story? Engineering, he contacted me and offered me a part-time job on a new project he had. He had become the head of the project planning unit in a project for building a new airport. He and the five other planners working on the team were all in their 50s, and some of them were not comfortable enough with computers. His idea was to bring me to help them with their computer issues. I happily accepted and enjoyed the income very much. After a couple of weeks, I became curious about project planning, so I bought a bunch of books about it and started learning.

Michel, could you tell me which project management approach do you prefer when you are driving projects? Are you rather a Waterfall of Agile enthusiast? I prefer a blend. It is more as I say in English “horses for courses”, it depends on the circumstances. If you have well-defined objectives, you do not think they will change and you think that you can predict the outcome, then probably Waterfall is the best solution, or traditional project management as we say. If there is a possibility that things may change because you are working in a turbulent and complex environment, also maybe because requirements have not been well-defined at the beginning, then it is preferable to work in a more Agile way where you can adjust as you go. But again, in the Agile approach, when you have a sprint, each sprint is fairly well defined. In program management each cycle of the program should also be well-defined, but the program as a whole is a series of cycles where you cannot really predict the end, like in Agile you cannot predict the end of the project – you can only predict the next sprint. So that is where I think I would see the mix and the harmonization.