Stupid Question: “Which way of working (WoW) you will choose between water-fall and agile?”
I heard that some companies always ask stupid question to candidates, who applied project management position, like … “Which way of working (WoW) you will choose between water-fall and agile?”
I assume that the question tends to know that the candidate fit with their work culture or not.
But the real correct answer is “Why I have to choose? There is no 1 way of working (WoW) fit for all. Plus there are a lot of WoW, not only water-fall and agile.”
90–95% of interviewer will keep asking the candidate again “If you HAVE TO choose it only ONE, which one you will choose?”
The real correct answer is still “No, I still cannot choose. You cannot choose WoW before you understand work or project and their factors.”
After 1 week interview, the result is … you did not get this job because they want you to answer “Agile”. 😒
Interesting? 🤔
Don’t be sad. I can say that you have a very good luck👍 because this company has an incorrect mindset.
Well, you can answer “Yes, I prefer Agile” if you really need this job. But when you work for them, you will find out that it is the awkward situation.
I believe that people who certified PMP, they may have some WoW that they love or prefer. BUT, as a PMP certified, we always know that we should use the correct WoW which fit with the project/program/product, organization and environment. Moreover, it could be different approach in each project.
How we choose the way of working?
In Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), it supports several lifecycles:
- Agile. A Scrum-based project lifecycle.
- Lean. A Kanban-based project lifecycle.
- Continuous Delivery: Agile. A Scrum-based lifecycle for long-standing product teams.
- Continuous Delivery: Lean. A Kanban-based lifecycle for long-standing product teams.
- Exploratory. An experimentation-based lifecycle, based on Lean Startup, for exploring marketplace needs.
- Program. A lifecycle for a large “team of teams.”
Although the focus of Disciplined Agile is on agile and lean ways of working, Disciplined Agile recognizes that in some cases you may still decide to adopt a waterfall/serial lifecycle. Disciplined Agile doesn’t explicitly support waterfall, but as you can see in picture below. It does recognize that in very low-risk situations a traditional approach makes sense.
Reality does not necessarily follow theory
I have a good example to explain you here:
A significant percentage of Scrum projects and also of projects applying other agile methods are today cross-corporate Project Business. There, contractors work for paying customers. The developer team is located on the contractor side, while the target stakeholders are inside the customer organization, as shown on the right-hand side in above picture. So, they are in different organizations that are parties in a contract and ideally partners in a joint project.
The Scrum Guide says, “The Scrum framework, as outlined herein, is immutable.” However, as the documented method does not help them, organizations had to find their own solutions to bridge this growing discrepancy between theory and reality. They have to deviate from the engraved method and do the project with two or more organizations. They have placed the Product owner on the situationally most appropriate side or have two of them, one on the customer side and another one inside the contractor organization. This also contradicts the Scrum Guide, which insists that only one Product Owner exists.
Point is you should wisely select way of working. As the scrum guide said “While implementing only parts of Scrum is possible, the result is not Scrum”. There is no reason to insist using scrum in the incorrect environment. So you have to use another WoW or approach.
