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In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

I am now covering processes that are performed during the Control process group of an agile project.   Remember, after the Planning process group, an agile project does not go in a linear fashion from Iterate to Control to Close; rather, it cycles from Iteration to Iteration with periodic checkpoints (many times at the end of an iteration cycle) where you Control or make changes to a project to make sure it gets back on track.   Or sometimes, you even change the track itself if there is a change in the requirements.

In the past set of posts, I have covered those processes done in the Control process group that relate to the fourth knowledge area of Team Performance.   Today I start covering  processes related to Risk Management:

• 5.11  Obstacle Removal
• 5.12  Variance and Trend Analysis
• 5.13  Escaped Defects

The first of these is 5.11 Obstacle removal, which I cover today.

Obstacle Removal

What are the categories of obstacles that can threaten a team’s ability to deliver the iteration goal at the end of the iteration?

• Technical challenges–usually the first category of obstacles the team will consider when discussing risk management
• Stakeholders–the customer or senior management may want to change the iteration goal
• Functional manager–may reassign members of an agile team
• Communications–may lead to both process and product impediments
• Competitor product release
• Changing customer preferences
• Regulatory changes

Organic risk management is done in conjunction with the daily stand-up meetings–“organic” in this case means “done as a part of agile project management processes.”   Overt risk management is done using traditional project management techniques (risk register, etc.).

The next process 5.12 Variance and Trend Analysis will be discussed in the next post.

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