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The Spring 2001 formation of the Agile Alliance proved to be a watershed event in the IT community. Since then, agile methods such as Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP), and techniques such as test-first programming and refactoring, have taken the software development industry by storm. Similarly, the formation of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) will prove to be an equally important watershed event for the project management community.

APLN was founded in 2004 by a group of people who write, practice and evangelize fast, flexible, customer value-driven approaches for leading projects. The APLN works closely with the Agile Alliance and the software community in general, as well as with people and companies outside our industry, providing solid advice for project leadership in general. However, here I'll focus on software projects.

Leadership Over Management
The APLN aims to train project leaders, not project managers. According to Jim Highsmith, APLN president and Cutter Consortium agile practice director, a manager is someone who "takes care of complexity by keeping track of things, plans and so on, while a leader takes care of uncertainty by creating an environment of experimentation and learning that is necessary to be innovative and deal with change." While both management and leadership are important, agile project teams require leaders who can help them delve into and deal with innovation and uncertainty.

Taking a page from the Agile Alliance, the APLN has defined a collection of values that express its vision: the Declaration of Interdependence and the APLN Principles. Agile practitioners read this vision and say "of course," noting that the best project managers and coaches they've worked with throughout their careers have exhibited most, if not all, of these traits. However, most developers can tell you of "professional managers" who just didn't get it, who focused exclusively on the technical aspects of their role to the exclusion of the human element—a grave mistake. Successful software projects need leaders, not managers.

We the People
The Declaration of Interdependence describes four critical themes. The first, captured in the first two values, is simple: Deliver value to your project stakeholders. Your stakeholders often make significant investments in software development, only to see their money wasted when teams spend months in meetings developing plans, writing documents and holding reviews. Your team will build a significantly better relationship with your stakeholders by giving them a say in how their money is spent and by providing concrete feedback in the form of working software—status reports pale in comparison to regular delivery of working software that meets stakeholders' highest-priority needs.

The second theme, the value of expecting uncertainty, boils down to Extreme Programming (XP)'s practice of embracing change. As Highsmith notes, this attitude is critical to your success in modern software development: "We all understand that the world is changing, but many of our processes and practices attempt to block, not embrace that change." Many traditionalists fear change, and this fear is reflected in their language. Terms such as scope creep or feature creep reflect this pejorative attitude, which leads to failure to deliver systems that meet their users' true needs. Project efficiency maven Mary Poppendieck, coauthor of Lean Software Development (Addison-Wesley 2003), sums up the agile view in a very different outlook on change, stating that "a changed requirement late in the lifecycle is a competitive advantage ... as long as you can act on it."

Third, the values of unleashed creativity, innovation and boosted performance comprise the APLN's "people and collaboration" theme. "The battle for future economic advantage, be it company-to-company or country-to-country, will be fundamentally knowledge based," says Highsmith. "Knowledge workers want to contribute; they want to work in a supportive, fun, fulfilling environment." In other words, if you want to succeed at software development, you'd better find ways to motivate developers—requiring them to write status reports probably won't do it.

The fourth theme, "Find the sweet spot," which also serves as the sixth principle of the Agile Data method, is interpreted simply as doing the right thing based on your situation. Sanjiv Augustine, the practice director of Lean-Agile Consulting at CC Pace and author of Managing Agile Projects (Prentice Hall, 2005), believes: "Cookie-cutter management is never tenable on agile projects—every project brings its own unique set of challenges and goals. Reliable results are achieved through careful assessment of each project's unique characteristics, and subsequent application of customized strategies, processes and practices."

So how do you dump the cookie cutter and go for creativity? As a project leader, you must understand the nature of the project, the organization in which you work, and the fundamentals of a variety of software methods and techniques. As was observed at this summer's Agile 2005 conference, you need to build your software process by choosing from a menu of techniques. You might use Extreme Programming (XP) as your base process, but then tailor in some practices from Agile Modeling (AM) to improve your modeling and documentation efforts, take some prototyping techniques from Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) to improve system usability, and borrow some ideas from Scrum to streamline change management. In short, to do the right thing at the right time, you need to understand a range of techniques, knowing how and when to apply them effectively. At www.agiledata.org/essays/differentStrategies.html, I compare and contrast a wide variety of software development techniques.

Principled Leadership
Many developers are critical of project managers, and rightfully so. In the past, I have worked for managers who were more interested in creating comprehensive project plans early on and then trying to "manage to" these plans instead of actually trying to lead the team. These projects invariably ran into trouble because the developers neither respected nor trusted these managers.

Instead, project leaders must make the team as effective as possible, shield them from the dysfunctional politics within the organization, and obtain the necessary resources to get the job done. This philosophy is clearly reflected in the APLN's principles of adopting strategies that leverage people and enhance teamwork. Mike Cohn, author of Agile Estimating and Planning (Addison-Wesley, 2005), captured this concept succinctly when he told me: "Great products are not built by specialists who each focus solely on their own parts. Great products are built when all team members share responsibility for product success. The ultimate shame is when a project fails and someone says, 'but my part worked.'"

Project managers must also be flexible—or as the APLN puts it, must manage uncertainty and continuously align to changing situations. Requirements change—this we know. Priorities also change, and, more importantly, we learn as we go along. Do you really want to stick to a plan based on sparse information available at the beginning of a project, or would you rather act based on the improved information you have today? I prefer the latter—and so do the experts at the leading edge of agility.

I Can See Clearly Now
The APLN aims to be the first source for techniques for project leadership excellence, offering strategies to improve the quality of our members' work lives, reliably produce project results, and deliver value to their clients. Effective project leaders must work in a variety of organizational cultures, and the APLN is defining a flexible foundation for an exciting project culture based on agility.

The Declaration of Interdependence: The core values of agile leadership In February 2005, Alistair Cockburn, Mike Cohn, Jim Highsmith, Preston Smith, Doug DeCarlo and Robert Wysocki came together to discover their common ground with respect to agile and adaptive management. Six core values emerged from their collaboration, which they dubbed "The Declaration of Interdependence": We increase return on investment by making continuous flow of value our focus. We deliver reliable results by engaging customers in frequent interactions and shared ownership. We expect uncertainty and manage for it through iterations, anticipation and adaptation. We unleash creativity and innovation by recognizing that individuals are the ultimate source of value, and creating an environment where they can make a difference. We boost performance through group accountability for results and shared responsibility for team effectiveness. We improve effectiveness and reliability through situationally specific strategies, processes and practices. —SWA

The Core Principles of the APLN Eight core principles that great project leaders share Relentlessly focus on value. Be situational specific. Manage uncertainty. Continuously align to changing situations. Lead with courage. Build strategies that leverage people. Design strategies based on teamwork. Communicate through immediate and direct feedback. Click here to find more information about APLN. —SWA

Scott W. Ambler is a Canada-based software process improvement (SPI) consultant, mentor and trainer with Ambysoft Inc. He has written several books and is a regular speaker at software conferences worldwide.

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