PMcrunch

Schumacher was right on years ago in his seminal book “Small is Beautiful“.  The subtitle “as if People Mattered” is very appropriate for this comparison between large and small, as the struggle between large and small continues, and by and large people are treated as more important on smaller projects.  The only difference is that the struggle manifests itself differently, based on changes in demographics, industry structure, and influence of technology, and the like.

In this instance, [tag]Agile[/tag] is small!  Yes, large projects are problematic, and how large project problems grow exponentially as the project grows.  For supporting details, see “Large Project Risks“.

However, I am concerned that small is not always better, and therefore [tag]methodologies[/tag] such as Agile are not better in every situation.  But I would temper that by saying that smaller is always better when possible, but that it is not always possible.  We must create small, agile projects out of our large projects, as much as practical, but otherwise we need to realize that we have a big project! 

Run the small projects using Agile, but run the overall program with the best methodology for that, which is probably something formal like [tag]CMMI[/tag] or [tag]PMBOK[/tag].  This is not a new idea, as Schumacher’s book shows.  For a copy of the book, see Small Is Beautiful, 25th Anniversary Edition: Economics As If People Mattered: 25 Years Later . . . With Commentaries.
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John Reiling, PMP
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