I was watching an NHL game the other evening. The team was playing a hockey game without a goalie.
Apparently the team had decided that their goalie was too expensive. So they traded him away to another team.
Then the backup goalie was sick. And his equipment didn’t fit anyone on the team, so they decided to “go without”.
In a pre-game interview with the General Manager, he said that it was strictly a financial decision. They felt that the team could fill in the goalie role by sharing it amongst themselves.
If it worked out as he expected, then they might consider this change as a permanent part of their hockey team structure.
At the very end of the interview, he wondered –
What does a Goalie do anyway? For 90% of the game they’re idle. What a waste of money. Why not get the team to “pitch in” and fill that role? It just makes good sense…
A week or so ago, out of a bit of frustration I posted the following comment on LinedIn:
Weird. Every day I see more and more "Agile Coaches" and they seem to have less and less experience. Does real experience matter anymore?
I received quite a few comments. Some of them are below:
- What's interesting is applying experience to different situations. As you know from last year Bob we transformed a product team under your coaching, I am now applying the same approach at a different firm. The objective is the same but the different people, process, tools and culture make it a different puzzle. Ask me in 6 months if experience matters - my guess is yes.
- I have noticed the same thing. Qualifications for being a coach are becoming "I was standing in the room when someone said agile". You get what you pay for.
- Sounds like you need a certification...that will solve the problem :)
This has been an ongoing debate for a number of years. There are essentially three groups of Project Managers:
- Traditional Project Managers – they’ve typically operated in Waterfall environments and frequently reference the PMBOK. They often follow best practices, templates, and models for effectively “managing” projects. Usually they view success to be plan-driven.
- Agile Project Managers – who are normally quite different than their traditional counterparts. They focus on the team and are more facilitators and coaches than project managers. They also consider success to be team-driven.
- Then there are Traditional Project Managers who want to play in agile environments, so they start looking for specific tools and techniques that they can “borrow” from the agile approaches. They take more of a hybrid approach to project management, and this group seems to be increasing as agile approaches have become mainstream. Often these folks have acquired PMI-ACP certification, but they have little else in the way of real world agile experience.
