Bring Yourself

I’ve recently finished a period of time as an IT Project Manager. At its heart this was a classic PM role. Capitol projects, such as updating a corporate PBX System, were at the heart of the job responsibilities. Those who know me well or followed this blog in the past might be surprised at this. I know when I speak to recruiters here in the Denver area they always are. That aside my big question as I started that position was what can I, as an Agile Practitioner, bring to this classic project management role?

Woman Handing Over Cardboard Boxes
Image courtesy of stockimages @ freedigitalphotos.net

At the start I made a tweet about bringing Agile to the company. Of course this is not something that one can just do, like bringing a stand-up desk. (Which I did near the end of my time.) Agile, especially as related to project management, is a way of working, a style, an approach.

After a week or two of settling in and finding my place on the team my goal was to excel in the job being asked of me. My efforts shifted to how I could do that. I was part of a team that ran very lean. We were under the direction of an extremely intelligent woman. All the projects I was involved in were already underway at some level. I was getting a good idea of what they required and where they were struggling, if they were. Thing is, what they required for the most part wasn’t anything I could easily pull from my Agile and Scrum background.More