Agile & Project Governance: Can They Coexist?

Written by Andrew Newbury

Wednesday 12 December, 2018

Image by Michael D Beckwith on Unsplash

A great article from Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software on how to align project governance and agile frameworks

The iterative and incremental nature of agile makes an agile approach seemingly less compatible with project governance or oversight. Traditional, sequential approaches to project management are a more natural fit with management’s desire for oversight on projects.

The purpose of project oversight, commonly called governance, is to make sure a project does not go astray.

Effective project governance can, for example, identify a project that will exceed its budget, leading to conversations about whether the project should be canceled. Governance can also identify a product that is drifting too far from its original goals, a project that is deviating from an architectural standard, or any number of similar high-level considerations important to the organization.