Chuck Cobb

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 1

Hi, My name is Chuck Cobb – I’m the author of “The Project Manager’s Guide To Mastering
Agile”. That will be the third book I’ve published to date on Agile Project Management and
I’ve also published two earlier books on business excellence.

However, I want to assure you that I am not just an academic book author. I have over 20
years of hands-on experience as a practicing project manager in a very broad range of
industries and application areas.

Welcome to my training course on “Learn the Truth about Agile versus Waterfall”. This
course is designed to help you see these two seemingly disparate approaches in a fresh
new perspective as complementary rather than competitive to each other.

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Agile Project Management Roadmap

7. Enterprise-level Agile Project Management

6. Advanced Agile Project Management
5. Mastering Agile Project Management
4. Introduction to Agile Project Management
3. Understanding Agile at a Deeper Level
2. What’s the Future of Agile Project Management?
Basic Primer to All of
1. Learn the Truth About Agile vs Waterfall the Other Courses

How to Prepare for PMI-ACP Certification (optional course)

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 2

This slide shows where this course fits into the overall Agile Project Management road map
that I’ve developed. I have developed a total of seven courses in this series on Agile Project
Management; this is the first course in that series and it serves as a primer to all of the
other courses.

The overall curriculum provides a very complete Agile Project Management training
program that is designed around enabling a project manager to successfully blend an Agile
and traditional plan-driven project management approach in the right proportions to fit any
given situation.

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 7. Enterprise-level Agile Project Management
6. Advanced Agile Project Management
Agile Project Management
5. Mastering Agile Project Management
4. Introduction to Agile Project Management
Completion Certificate
3. Understanding Agile at a Deeper Level
2. What’s the Future of Agile Project Management?
1. Learn the Truth About Agile vs Waterfall

Any student who completes the overall

curriculum of all seven courses will
receive a signed completion certificate.

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 3

Any student who completes the overall curriculum of all seven o these courses will receive
a signed completion certificate from the Agile Project Management Academy.

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 Be sure to check the bonus materials at
the end of the course for significant
discounts on all of these courses.

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 4

Be sure to check the bonus materials at the end of the course for significant discounts on
all of these courses.

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How To Get the Most Out of My Courses

1. Post topics for discussion and

share information with other students

2. Contact me if you have a question

or if you need help in any way

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 5

Before we get into the course, I want to tell you that I’m passionate about the information I
teach and I’m committed to help my students get the most out of all of my courses. I want
to encourage you to fully participate in the course by first posting discussion topics an
participating in discussions that you think might be of general interest to other students.
That’s a great way to get a lot more out of the course and to share your experiences with
others.

The second way to get the most out of this course is to contact me directly if you have any
questions or if I can be of help in any way. To contact me directly through Udemy, all you
need to do is to click on the icon with my name at the top of the course page – that will
bring you to my instructor page, and on that page, you will find a link labeled “Send
Message”. I will do my best to respond to any questions as quickly as I can.

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 “Waterfall” Agile

Learn How to Get the Best of Both Worlds

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 6

This course is called “Learn the Truth About Agile versus Waterfall” and is designed to help
you learn to bridge the gap between these two seemingly competitive approaches.

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Agile Adoption Has Doubled Since 2009

A Forrester study from 2009 observed

that 35% of organizations used agile.

Actuation Consulting’s 2013 research

shows that 73.68% have adopted agile to
develop products

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 7

Although the exact numbers from various surveys are be open to discussion, there is no question that Agile
has become the latest management trend of today and it is much more than just a fad – it is really here to
stay and the rate of adoption of Agile methodologies has increased significantly since 2009.
• A Forrester study from 2009 observed that 35% of organizations used Agile
• By 2013, a study by Actuation Consulting showed that the adoption rate of Agile had grown to over 70%
which was more than double what was observed in the 2009 survey.

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The Agile “Bandwagon”

Like many new things, Agile” is

becoming a hot new buzz word
and everyone wants to jump on
the “Agile bandwagon”

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 8

Like many new things, Agile” is becoming a hot new buzz word and everyone wants to jump on the “Agile
bandwagon” without necessarily fully understanding why they’re getting into it and exactly what they expect
to get out of it.
It reminds me a lot of when Six Sigma was hot in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. In those days, Six Sigma was
what we called the “Program du Jour”, there was a lot of hype about it and everyone wanted to jump on the
Six Sigma bandwagon. Several patterns were apparent at that time…there was a lot of “hoopla” (like green
belts and black belts) associated with Six Sigma, a lot of people got lost in the mechanics of doing Six Sigma,
people tended to think that Six Sigma was a panacea for any possible problem that a business could have and
they tended to regard all other previous process improvement methodologies as obsolete and passé. A
similar thing is happening with Agile today -
While Agile has huge potential advantages for a business, I think it’s important not to get lost in some of the
hype that exists about Agile and objectively understand the differences between an Agile approach and a
traditional project management approach and the benefits and limitations of each.

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 Just becoming “Agile” is not necessarily the
most important goal in itself depending on the
nature of the business you’re in.
We need to take time to understand what
problem Agile will potentially solve and how it
will benefit your business.

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 9

Just becoming “Agile” is not necessarily the most important goal in itself depending on the
nature of the business you’re in. We need to take time to understand what problem Agile
will potentially solve and how it will benefit your business.

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Agile Challenges for Businesses and Project Managers

“Waterfall” Agile

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 10

Agile can pose a difficult challenge for many businesses and project managers. Many
businesses and project managers have an existing management system and project
management approach that is based on a traditional, plan-driven approach (or what is
sometimes called “Waterfall”) and are faced with a choice of using:

• Continuing to use a traditional, heavily control-oriented and plan-driven approach which

has an emphasis on managing costs and schedules that may be constraining the
business, or

• A more agile approach which can offer many benefits including faster time-to-market
and higher business value; however, there is also a risk associated with losing control of
projects with less focus on managing costs and schedules

Many people see this as a binary and mutually-exclusive choice between two extremes - I
want to show you how to get the best of both of these two worlds

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The Problem
Business Environment

Projects

“Waterfall” “Agile”

Many businesses and project managers see this as a binary and mutually-exclusive choice
and attempt to force-fit their business and projects to one of these extremes

That often causes a lot of confusion and consternation

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 11

The fundamental problem is that because many people see this as a binary and mutually-
exclusive choice, they make the mistake of attempting to force-fit their projects and
business environment to one of these extremes and that can cause a lot of confusion and
consternation because it often doesn’t result in a good fit.

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Why is This Video So Important? (cont.)
The result is probably not optimal and can be problematic

The methodology may not fit the project

and might also not fit the company’s business environment and culture
© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 12

The result is probably not an optimal solution and it can often result in a mismatch that
very problematic.

It’s like attempting to plug an appliance requiring AC power into a DC outlet. The
methodology may not be well-suited to the project and it might also not fit well with the
company’s business environment and culture.

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The Solution
Business
Environment
Overall Project
Approach
Project
Characteristics

Development
Approach

Fit the approach (or combination of approaches) to the project and to the business environment
That may require more skill but it definitely can be done!
© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 13

A better solution is to go in the other direction and fit the approach (or combination of
approaches) to the project and to the business environment.

That may require more skill but it definitely can be done! My training courses are designed
to help businesses and project managers develop the right skills to create a well-integrated
approach to fit your business and projects.

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 What’s Unique About this Training?

Traditional Plan-driven
Project Management Agile
(“Waterfall”)

We need to see these two approaches in a fresh new perspective as

complementary to each other rather than competitive
© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 14

The training curriculum and the three books I’ve written in this area are all very unique.
There are a lot of books and training on Agile as well as a lot of books and training on
project management. What’s unique about my books and training is that they are designed
to help close the gap between the project management community and the Agile
community to help people see Agile and traditional plan-driven project management
approaches in a fresh new perspective as complementary to each other rather than
competitive and to help people see how to blend these two approaches together in the
right proportions to fit a given situation to get the best of both worlds.

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 NEXT LECTURE:
DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
WHAT IS “WATERFALL”?

© 2014-2019 High Impact Project Management, Inc. 15

The first problem we need to get past is that the terms “Agile” and “Waterfall” are used
very loosely in actual practice…In the next section, we’re going to discuss the definition of
these terms and the next lecture is “What is ‘Waterfall’”?

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