Is your project naked?

Is your agile development group hiding information about their work in progress? If you a project manager or customer, have you heard, "trust us we are doing agile?" If you are sitting with a project plan that says work will be done in 6 four week iterations and all you have is a loose idea of what is planned for each iteration, how do you manage risk? Traditionally, you'd ask for a more detailed plan. You'd push for predictable big planning upfront. However, the reality is that the team probably can't make a more detailed plan due to uncertainties. So you do you manage risk?

If you are in the development team, it isn't enough to say, "We have an iteration plan and we'll deliver working code at the end of the iteration, trust us!" Trust isn't enough. If a project plan schedules 6 months in 6 four week iterations, then it isn't enough to give the project manager only six data points to show progress. Some transparency in to the progress within the iteration is required and it is essential that this data is shared with the project manager and the customer. What is being reported out must be the same data and information being used to run the project internally. At Microsoft we call this concept "Trustworthy transparency."

Transparency is the antidote to requests for big planning upfront. Transparency offers project managers the ability to do risk management through the project life time. If you aren't reporting cumulative flow, or burn down or burn up, or (gulp) earned value, every day to every stakeholder then you aren't embracing the core foundation of agile development techniques - high trust.

Try running a naked project. You'll find it liberating. Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson