mm1 at the PM Forum 2011
Black and white thinking has no place in project management
mm1 Consulting & Management was present at the PM Forum of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement e. V. (the German Association for Project Management) that took place in Nuremberg on October 25-26, 2011 with a paper entitled The dogmatic "either agile or classical" approach in project management has served its time – it's the right mixture that counts. The presentation was given by Dr. Michael Kirchhof, Associate Partner at mm1, and Professor Bodo Kraft (Aachen University of Applied Sciences), who has also demonstrated his expertise in this subject in numerous publications and appearances at international conferences. "The cooperation with Professor Kraft, whom I have known for a long time now, has simply lent itself to the issue and been very productive, as we have been able to combine our practical experience with the latest scientific insights", Dr. Kirchhof explained.
The starting point for this issue was the increasing importance of agile development and project management methods. "Purely classical project management, where the development process is partitioned into discrete phases, is being increasingly marginalized in favor of more efficient and above all more flexible agile methods", is how Professor Kraft summarized the current situation. But he went on to say that in practice the agile approaches on their own often fall short of the intended objectives. This is mostly due to an incorrect understanding of what agility is and, consequently, poor implementation of the methods. The solution to this problem could be in a combination of the classical and agile approaches. "Why don't we take the best of both worlds and proceed in a manner that is not just methodical, but also appropriately agile? This currently prevailing and/or-thinking does not further companies interests, indeed it robs them of any profitable alternatives", said Dr. Michael Kirchhof. The approach introduced at the PM Forum shows what this combination could look like and also, more importantly, precisely how its implementation could work in practice.
The original press release is available to download. For more informations please have a look at the complete article (Link).
