Most organizations have agile and waterfall projects. Many call themselves “bimodal”, and most are aiming at taking the next step, which could be Scaled Agile or Hybrid. Regardless of this choice, it leads to many relevant questions:
- How does it affect my Project Managers and Scrum Masters?
- How does it affect my Portfolio Managers?
- How will top management understand the new concept e.g. Value Streams?
- Do we have all the roles needed e.g. Product Managers, Product Owners, DevOps etc?
- Which IT platform can support our future way of working and how does PPM and Agile fit together from a tool perspective?
- …..
There are hundreds of more important questions, and most understand that identifying needed roles in the future way of working, is key. On the other hand, I have personally met many PMOs, who are suffering from lack of overview. They are trying to see how a phase-gate model can fit into agile iterations, and how financial forecasting should take place in general.
There is no true right or wrong, but I am personally a fan of the SAFe model as a foundation. Frameworks should always be tweaked to fit the specific organization, but SAFe gives you a great head start and common language, when dealing with scaled agile.
In this 35 min video, I will discuss and show how Microsoft Project Online, Project Professional and Visual Studio Team Services can fit together. In the video, integration between the two worlds happens through the Microsoft Project client. If this is not wanted by the organization, you should aim for a server-server integration from your PPM platform to preferred Agile/Kanban setup such as VSTS.
