Beyond Scope, Schedule, and Cost: Rethinking Performance

A March 2009 Business Week article proclaims, "There is no more Normal" In the throes of such pervasive change the traditional emphasis on "following the plan with minimal changes" needs to be supplanted by an agile stress on "adapting successfully to inevitable changes." Furthermore, if agility is about delivering customer value by being flexible, then how can adherence to a traditional scope, schedule, and cost plan be the best way to measure performance? It can't. We
need to move beyond the classic Iron Triangle measures to an Agile Triangle that focuses on Value, Quality, and Constraints. We still need to measure predictability and performance, but in a different way.

Agile teams are asked to be agile, flexible, and adaptive, but then are told to conform to planned scope, schedule, and cost goals. They are asked to adapt, but inside a very small box. If we are to scale agility to large projects and bring agile values to organizations, then we must change performance measures. To mirror the Agile Manifesto, it's not that scope, schedule, and cost are unimportant, but that value and quality are more important. This talk explores the necessity for and the rationale behind moving to this new set of agile performance measures.

Jim Highsmith is an executive consultant at ThoughtWorks, Inc. He has 30-plus years’ experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer.

Jim is the author of Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, Addison Wesley 2004; Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems, Dorset House 2000 and winner of the prestigious Jolt Award, and Agile Software Development Ecosystems, Addison Wesley 2002. Jim is the recipient of the 2005 international Stevens Award for outstanding contributions to systems development.

Jim is a coauthor of the Agile Manifesto, a founding member of The AgileAlliance, coauthor of the Declaration Interdependence for project leaders, and cofounder and first president of the Agile Project Leadership Network. Jim has consulted with IT and product development organizations and software companies in the U.S., Europe, Canada, South Africa, Australia, China, Japan, India, and New Zealand.

By With Jim Highsmith