The edict is passed, and now your organization is going to be Agile. Congratulations! What does that mean? For most, this means implementing morning stand-ups, user stories, acceptance criteria, and story points. It doesn’t end there, though. The rest of your organization needs to adapt as well.

When I was a QA Manager, I was frequently asked the question, “Why do I need to pay for testing?” Quality is a cost. It costs money to test and maintain those tests. The trick for project managers is to show the value of quality.

When an organization starts a new project, there is often a flurry of activity. Most of it revolves around cost in some form or fashion.

In software development, project managers are often tasked with building or modifying features that add scope to an application. Scope is something that most project managers are painfully aware of, as it frequently increases costs and complexity. In an Agile environment, new features are broken down, refined, estimated, and then developed.

A good friend of mine once told me, “A fast nickel is better than a slow quarter.” This is one of those statements that often sounds witty but is usually ignored. He told me this a couple of decades ago, and I didn't think much of it until later in my career.