For many years, Agile Alliance was one of the only organizations agnostic about selling certifications, creating one of the largest spaces for Agile experts to exchange ideas and question many of the management rules entrenched in the corporate world.
While all organizations around Agile (in Brazil and worldwide) were selling certifications, training, and consulting, the Agile Alliance remained apart, building spaces and fostering the largest Agile event in the world. The financial resources generated by the organization through the Agile Conference were used to enable various projects. For some time, I was in the role of Initiative Shepherd to support people in creating programs in Colombia, India, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, and the USA.
This is exactly what attracted me to the AA and made me dedicate 6 years to the Board of Directors, in addition to more than 10 years in the Brazilian agile community. I am quite proud of the work and believe that I contributed to the reach of agile principles and values in the world. These were incredible years of work, and I have great respect for all the people I've met while active in the organization. The merger between PMI and AA comes as the first big news for the process and methodologies market in 2025. I understand the challenges and I am confident that it wasn't an easy decision to make, and I respect it. There's no easy answer.
Alfred Pennysworth said it best:
"And in desperation, they turn to a man they don't fully understand" - The Dark Knight
Before presenting my opinions: my term serving on the Agile Alliance Board of Directors ended at the end of 2021, and I have no internal information. I write with what I know from public data about both organizations, in all these years dedicated to the agile world.
PMI acquires Agile Alliance?
The news of the Agile Alliance's partnership with PMI signals a new stage in the market, affected by the change that happened since 2018. The world has changed, and Agile and its institutions have not been able to adequately keep up with the new business reality: the new generation of technology professionals already sees Agile as unnecessary bureaucracy that doesn't help deliver anything properly. Furthermore, I believe that this movement denotes the transition to the Late Majority of Agile adoption - nothing more ironic than the Institution that in the past drastically criticized self-management, coming to rescue a non-profit in times of crisis.
I am confident that this is the correct decision for the survival of what the Institution has built in these 23 years in the agile community, and continue the mission of Agile Alliance. You make decisions based on what you have, not with what you wish you had. As much as my cynicism fights against it, something like this was inevitable.
Running a non-profit with limited resources, long-term commitments, and amid a cultural change is a mega challenge: it is a complex game ensuring the organization's growth and expanding people's participation in the main event. All this in a reality where any unsuccessful event puts the very existence of the organization at risk. Even with a few other sources of revenue, I imagine the last few years have been intense for the management team. Post-covid, cancelled conferences and long term contracts with hotels took a toll in the organization's financials.
All the information is shared publicly on the Agile Alliance website, and the scenario the last few years was not pretty.
A fact: certifications guarantee the survival of companies in this market. Staying agnostic, holding events and following the nostalgia of 20 years ago, does not. The period of agile idealists is over. Although certification companies are facing challenges of their own, a small non-profit has worst problems to solve.
The software development community has largely abandoned agile events, as they have become irrelevant. The product community has largely abandoned agile events, as they have become irrelevant. And in the midst of all this, the participation of project management professionals has grown, seeking to deepen mainstream practices from 2010, where PMI shines. Will this merge change that? Is it a lost fight?
In the quest to expand the reach of Agile to all work fronts, most organizations have become irrelevant and lost strength: those that have transformed their content into standardized tools, delivering certificates and following the Agile Industrial Complex playbook, remain.
For years, there have been agile initiatives trying to bring the new generation of technology professionals closer, without much success. The numbers speak for themselves, and the change comes at an opportune moment.
David Sabine said it more directly, and I agree: PMI will masticate the Agile Alliance, just as it did with Disciplined Agile. Although I disagree with the text on several points, it's hard to believe in the altruism and goodwill of PMI in maintaining the AA organization, while the entire Staff becomes part of PMI, the trademark changes, and many more questions about the Conference, the Agile Manifesto Website, Initiatives: all not yet answered. If it walks like a duck...
The extension of Agile Alliance independence and PMI influence is not fully clear, as the role the agile and pmp community will play in the years to come. For all intents and purposes, nothing changes. This is PR stage talk, and more time is needed to grasp what's going to happen.
We can expect more info arriving in the following weeks. I hope to understand this further.
I remember the beginning of my role on the Board, while we were discussing the possibility of partnering with PMI on more mundane matters, and the understanding was:
A Partnership with PMI is like a Gorilla inviting you for a dinner and asking you to come in a Banana Costume
To be fair: I'm biased in my opinions about PMI, mainly due to what I've already seen done around the events we built in Brazil. Like when the president of PMI Brazil, at a Scrum Gathering, said that under no circumstances would self-management work in the world, and that "Some people always need to be told what to do".
I have lived through the reflection of project management based on fixed processes, fixed estimates, and fixed scopes, dependent on change management so bureaucratic that no software project survived to tell the tale. Everything that PMI represented in the past was precisely the reason for the event in Snowbird, creating the set of principles and values that transformed our way of working. This movement sends a clear message to organizations around the world about the preferred way of working, and that’s what worries me.
Despite this, at the Agile Alliance we had numerous important initiatives that bore some fruit such as the Agile Practices Guide, delivered to the entire PMI community. Deep down, we thought: PMI will do the work anyway, and we can support them so that it doesn't derail the concept completely. Furthermore, the Brightline Initiative, active a few years ago, seemed to me to be quite independent as an organization in the past, but not sure where it stands today. Of the evils, the lesser.
At the end, PMI has been transforming their own approach in the last few years, and is good to see the work being done. Although many members do not follow the same path, there is an willingness to modernize its base. My skepticism might not be unfounded, but for sure could be exaggerated.
The Agile Alliance gains a new life. Even though this partnership looks more like a classic M&A, I want to end my text with a more positive perspective.
I really hope that everything AA has built can serve to illuminate the discipline of project management in the PMI community, and expand the reach of Agile principles and values.
Ray Arell, whom I respect a lot, said it better than I ever could:
Ultimately, if carefully nurtured, the union of Agile Alliance and PMI could enable both organizations to better meet the evolving needs of teams, stakeholders, and businesses globally. This could mark the beginning of an ambitious new chapter in how projects are conceived, planned, and executed. I look forward to seeing how this all unfolds.
I hope that in 2 years, I can look back and see what was produced with good eyes, until then, we wait...
Comments