ILX gets DSDM and goes Agile… maybe

ILX (ILX Group, a software Best Practice training company strongly associated with PRINCE2) have added an Agile course to their quiver. The Agile Project Management™ (AgilePM®) covers

Agile training at Foundation and Practitioner level
Accredited project management certification for agile environments, delivered as a four day classroom course that provides a thorough grounding in the DDSM Atern Agile approach.

The first thing I noticed was the ® and ™. The next thing was the DSDM (Dynamic systems development method) choice. DSDM describe themselves as “about scalable Agile delivery of projects and programmes with the right amount of governance and control that enables successful innovation.“

‘Governance and Control‘ and ‘innovation‘ – Oxymoron? And how does that sit with the Agile Manifesto’s ‘Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.’ However, ILX run a number of certification classes so I guess running an Agile one is yet another sign of the broadening acceptance of Agile methodologies.

Going back to the DSDM page and their stated aim to provide scalable Agile delivery, this would seem to put it head on for a turf war with SAFe and their ‘interactive knowledge base for implementing agile practices at enterprise scale.‘ One thing that is obvious is that DSDM is keen to stress its Agile roots (in RAD) and has a framework that is geared to work with Scrum (see their white paper The DSDM Agile Project Framework for Scrum.) Given Scrum is either the most or one of the most popular and widely known methodologies, this is a pretty smart move.

Maybe both DSDM and SAFe will survive in a niche market, or maybe its VHS vs. Betamax again and one will win outright in the end. Although some will decry any process that has formal requirements and being ‘not-Agile’, maybe this is the price of finally laying Waterfall to rest and getting all of big business over to Agile? Also, as Ken Schwaber – a vocal critic of SAFe – is an honorary member of DSDM consortium, maybe ILX have nailed it and DSDM is the horse to back.