How to Handle Governance on Agile Projects?

Agile is not lack of discipline, but takes more management, engineering and governance disciplines.

Agile is methodology and a set of guidelines. Agile software development is not lack of discipline, but needs more management and engineering disciplines; it also takes stronger governance disciplines to ensure Agile project success. Here are a few perspectives on Agile governance:

Strong governance team: You need to ensure that the business and the delivery team relevant stakeholders are represented in the governance team. The need to deliver value and products that the business need as quickly as possible would require some strong support and guidance from the leadership, and continues cross-functional collaboration which helps put in place without compromising any of the other agile principles.

·         Servant leadership: The agile approach to governance is that of empowering the teams involved in the project, while the servant leadership approach does eliminate the perceived bottlenecks commonly associated with the traditional governance concept. Overall, through continuous collaboration and focus on the solution that is fit for business, the team take responsibility for delivering on time and to budget quality solution that meet business value. It is the way that the team will do the right thing.

Agile GRC: Addressing risks, issues, concerns and communicating actions are of critical importance in ensuring project success and should be major concerns. Trust the SCRUM Master to manage the team and focus on achieving the definition of done. Don't overdo documentation, but document what ought to be documented. Stay positive, flexible, and don't turn sprints into mini-waterfalls. Let the shareholders set direction and excite them with working software. Don't let process become impediment to project progress. Consideration of all team members via continuous collaboration.

Governance framework: Most important, keep eyes on context changes and agree on which of the levers, scope, time, cost or capacity need to be adjusted, and advise the teams on re-planning accordingly. It should definitely be people over process, but also people using the process of governance to enhance the delivery of business value on time in tranches that meet the business needs. An appropriate governance framework is even more important for disciplined Agile delivery environment, where to address the full delivery life cycle involving agile and non-agile teams, several core methods are combined, or a few “traditional” practices (such as doing some up-front requirements and architecture modeling tailored to reflect agile philosophies etc.,) are adopted to round out the overall solution delivery process. In these environments, appropriate procedures for managing cross-teams dependencies, issues and risks are integral success factors.

Agile needs agile governance, simplicity is the key, make it simple but mature, practical with agility.

Posted in: Agile,GRC,Project Management