On 3 January 2025 the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Agile Alliance® published an announcement that they signed an agreement on 31 December 2024 through which Agile Alliance® joined PMI, to be known as “PMI Agile Alliance” from that day on. I have no idea where the ® went but it certainly caused a lot of fuzz and noise on so-called social media. As I don’t really care and I don’t expect it to cause that much fuzz or noise on the workfloor, I wasn’t planning on joining any of the debates.
But, Frank Ray asked me on LinkedIn if I had any ‘take’ on this. Despite my initial thought “Not really”, his question was seemingly still enough to trigger me and to get me thinking anyhow (which is something to think about in itself). So, I decided I might as well jot down my thoughts quickly:
I am not involved in or associated with either organization, or their offerings. I never was. What strikes me most are the large, corporate structures that they both have in place. Too large, too corporate for me to feel comfortable with anyhow. So large, so corporate that I am not too sure about the extent to which they actually represent their practitioners and members. I obviously do know a lot of these practitioners and members.
I did find it interesting that Mike Cohn, one of the original co-founders of the Agile Alliance, shared on LinkedIn how the reason for this merger/absorption is the decline in revenues from events since the Corona crisis. Isn’t it fascinating how in general it is said that organizations need to become more ‘Agile’ in order to adapt to changing markets and business conditions? And that of all organizations, the home of Agile has been unable to do so unless giving up on its independence?
At the time of the creation of the Agile Manifesto (2001) and the subsequent establishment of the Agile Alliance (I know Ken Schwaber was also a co-founder but I have never been able to have a clear confirmation on who else was), the world of software development was “dominated by plan-driven, industrial views“[1], “in times when failing heavy-weight, waterfall approaches were replaced by heavy-weight, waterfall-like RUP implementations“[1]. At that time, the PMI certainly was part of the problem, and not of the way out.
Continue reading The Impact Expected from Agile Alliance® Joining PMI
