20 Jul AGILE VS YOLO
Besides being a Project Manager, I am a mother of 3 teenagers, so every day I must learn new centennial vocabulary in order to communicate with them.
One of the first centennial words I learned was YOLO, the first time I heard it I asked them, what does it mean? … they just laughed at me and said, “Never mind Mom, you won´t understand”.
I investigated and discovered that YOLO stands for: You Only Live Once, it is said when you want to encourage others to be careless and challenge them to take a risk without overthinking no matter the outcome. I was happy … I learned a new word, next time they won´t laugh.
Then a few weeks ago, a young project manager presented me his Project Plan and he said: “I don´t know if you’re familiar with this, but I am using AGILE Methodology, it is a trend and maybe I won´t make sense to you”.
He continued saying than he will be using Agile Methodology, because he doesn´t know the objective of the project, nor the solution so he will be solving the project improvising every week until finish, and he will need everybody to be very flexible.
I couldn´t help asking: “You know that Agile approach is not the same as YOLO, right?” He couldn´t believe I was asking that.
I told him, Agile is not a methodology, is an approach that has a framework to work with and a mindset to support it. It is suitable for some project life cycles, there are 4 main approaches you can choose from: Traditional, Agile, Extreme and Hybrid.
Improvising it is not an approach, that is YOLO practice if you want to use a name for it!
It was very helpful to know Centennial vocabulary and know every approach I need to know to develop my craft as a Project Manager.
MENTAL NOTE: AGILE APPROACH AND YOLO PRACTICE ARE NOT THE SAME.