Projects to the Point Conference - Final Wrap-up

I'm home from Cairo. The P2P conference wrapped up on Thursday. I am already looking forward to the 3rd annual conference next year.

The agile track for the conference wrapped up with a panel discussion. In addition to myself, the panel included Jim Cundiff, Jesse Fewell, Dave Prior and Thushara Wijewardena (Dave and Jim pictured here during an earlier session). One of the topics we discussed was when to use agile.

I tend to look at agile as a tool, just like traditional project management tools, ITIL, Six Sigma etc. I think you have to look at your particular project and decide if this is a good project to apply the agile tool. If you're talking software development, chances are that the answer is going to be yes. I pointed out in construction, agile isn't the best approach. If you're building a bridge, you need to have all the requirements before you start construction. However, even here, you could use an agile approach to the design stage.

Dave Prior used the term "enlightened project manager" to describe someone that knows how to apply the right tool at the right time. So do you have all the tools you need in your toolkit?