Review: A Guide to Assurance of Agile Delivery

This guide (2017) is a result of the working group of the Association for Project Management’s Assurance Special Interest group (APM’s Assurance SIG).

The guide addresses assurance in relation to the areas that are considered the fundamental aspects (and key differences form traditional waterfall approach) of agile project management and assurance.

Like the other book I reviewed (Agile Governance and Audit), this book too focusses on temporary project organizations using an agile way of delivery (compare PRINCE2 Agile, AgilePM, DAD, PMI Agile where we have agile teams using e.g. Scrum) and not on organizations using e.g. SAFe, LeSS or Nexus. The four areas described, are (each in a separate chapter):

• Approaching reviews in an agile way provides guidance on how to plan and conduct reviews. It starts with early engagement to obtain an understanding how the organization applies agile project management, what methodologies, (reporting) tools and approaches it employs. A Terms of Reference (ToR) focusing on the specifics of an agile way of working, the planning of the review and the the output.
• Environments focus on the agile ways of working and the physical working environment. You get ten general health indicators to assess an agile team. Furthermore, you should take the time to familiarize yourself with the whitboards/walls the, preferably co-located, teams are using to understand their Kanbans.
• Governance starts with an overview of generic governance topics that are applicable too for agile projects. On top of this you get some additional characteristics of agile projects that you, as an assessor, should keep in mind. E.g. the agile approach and terminology, the way the backlog is managed, the agile specific roles like an agile team, a product owner and a scrum master and their behaviors.
• Risk management mechanisms are probably leaner than for traditional projects. Incremental and iterative delivery with regular client feedback reduces the chance to deliver the wrong product. An overview of specific risks for agile projects and how to cope with them is provided.

At the end of the book you get checklists for the four areas (approaching review, environments, governance and risk checklists) and references to further reading including links to National audit Office and HM Government documents and several agile related sites.

Conclusion: This easy to read book focusses, as stated, on temporary projects with an agile delivery team. I would say it’s a good starting point, and it helps to get an understanding how to perform an assessment on agile projects.

To order: A Guide to Assurance of Agile Delivery