Plz don’t do this. 

Agile postulates that large scale planning is impossible due to complexity and uncertainty and instead proposes iterative fast to market development of product, service and process.

Just enough planning for continued execution is instituted.  Story mapping and kanban for tiered management of teams are covered. Good cover of basics, could use some experimental and comparative data.

Cottmeyer, M. E. (2011). Large scale program and portfolio management with Scrum and Kanban. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2011—North America, Dallas, TX. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/agile-scrum-kaban-business-management-6164

I always make sure HR does not include “multitasking” in the job description.

That is bad. All-around. Bad management, bad budgeting, bad strategy.

Multitasking is wasted motion.

Harold Pashler has shown that people can only think about one thing at a time, and switching between tasks creates delay and interference. Gerald Weinberg  postulates that Adding a single project to your workload will drop productivity by 20%

Why do we do it? The human brain seems to enjoy it. After all, it did not evolve for project management, but rather hunter-gathering. Interest in new stimuli insures You don’t miss that delicious snack or deadly predator.

Don’t multitask. Even if it feels good.

Further reading:

https://www.solutionsiq.com/learning/blog-post/agile-resolution-1-destroy-multi-tasking-the-productivity-killer/

https://turboscrum.com/context-switching/

Ah, the ghosts of yesteryear. I remember reading Yahoo’s glowing testimonies of implementing agile in their development process. So much time saved! Such productivity! Very happy developers. Much scrum.

Then of course, Yahoo got hacked. Multiple times. What happened? Who’s to blame? Corporate culture and strategy, of course.

Yahoo did not prioritize engineering – google and now amazon are notorious for investing in infrastructure done right. Scalable. Automated. Very attractive to good engineers.

Yahoo did not prioritize engineers – did not hire the best, did not pay to get the best, did not promote the best. Yahoo though it was a media company.  They though search was unimportant. Even when Yahoo engineers were pointing out that they were using google instead of yahoo for their searches.

Paul Graham thinks yahoo failed because they let the suits “adult supervise” the developers, and the hacker culture central to a tech company left. I agree.

And the death-throes under Mayer? Bad acquisitions, failing revenue, scattered strategy, and widely criticized leadership.

Why do I bring this up now? Because process frameworks can’t fix lack of strategy. It’s a timeless lesson. I’ve been doing process this week. And if you are not brought in to do strategy and there is no strategy, your only option is to run.

Further reading:

http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

https://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/careers/what-went-wrong-for-marissa-mayer-at-yahoo-5-reasons-ceo-failed-perform-turnaround-3655968/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2015/11/20/marissa-mayer-case-study-in-poor-leadership/#414a313e3b46

https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2015/11/19/the-last-days-of-marissa-mayer/#57b16636141f

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzfjPoMaaRA

As I recently retook my Scrum certification, I went over some key differences between PMI and Scrum project management.

Completeness vs complexity

From a mid-level managers perspective, PMI certifications cost more, which does affect the bottom line once You get to scale. This may however be the least concern, as any successful business orients at net profits and not costs.

PMI-ACP offers a broader outlook onto agile methodologies. Which is not necessary per se,  as the Scrum guide alone, when implemented holistically, has certainly been more than enough for many successful projects.

Experience vs franchise licensing

The people behind Scrum.org wrote the book on the subject, and the manifesto. And participated in multiple successful large-scale projects. the PMI-ACP certification was introduced in 2011, ten years after the agile manifesto was published. Some say that happened due to PMI loss income as industry shifted away from traditional project management frameworks.

I personally have had success with both having teams get certified in-house, without the need for an external authority, and having people take the Scrum.org online-only certification. At the end, it was strategically enabling developers to own the project that made the real business impact.

Further reading:

PMBOK® guide versus SCRUM mastery points of convergence and divergence

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/pmbok-guide-scrum-convergence-divergence-8089