It’s only the third week of November 2017 and we’ve seen a lot of businesses closing down throughout the year. Shocking enough, some famous names are among those closed.
Image from: The Straits Times
Why Those Businesses Are Closed is probably the first question people have in mind. Of course, when it comes to business, the main reason for closure is that it cannot survive today’s market. The next question will be why it can’t survive. Generally speaking, disruptive software-based competitors are the ones to blame, but they’re not the only reason. If we ever dig deeper, then we will find out that the startup businesses work in a faster, more precise and adaptive way than those older businesses that customers, especially when it comes to retail, seek for in this ever evolving world.
Project Management Institute, realizing that business operations are run by project managers, has published ‘Agile Practice Guide’ together with their ‘Project Management Body of Knowledge’ 6th Edition guide this year. This publication is firming project manager’s position in an organization: to be the agility initiator. In short, to help the organizations survive in the agile era by spreading the agile work ethics to the project teams which, expectedly, will spread even wider to the whole organization.
How Does Agile Project Management Work will be the next question people have in mind. Most organizations today are using the conventional project management method, where project plans are created and firmed prior to executing the projects. This is a very good way of running a project, but not so effective today, since this method typically takes a very long time (in some cases even months) for project planning alone.
Agile project management is not necessarily a new thing: in earlier version of PMBOK, waterfall method was introduced. Even though waterfall and agile are two different things, but the idea is the same in the sense that both do high level project planning and work on the details when the project is running. This way, projects can be completed within a shorter period and more specific, desirable results. It is not a secret that customer is #1 factor in a business’ success. Today, competition is getting tighter, hence customers have more options. If one business cannot keep up with customers’ demands, then they will certainly choose another option. When a business has no customer, then it will soon be closed down.
Project managers are the key persons of a business – they are the single point of contact between customer and an organization. Surviving organizations will quickly see their project managers as their best opportunity to change the way they’re working to agility. Starting with project teams, to continue to the whole organization, while keeping the business goals in mind.
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