What projects are suitable for Agile?

At Agile Tour Sydney 2013, I participated in an Open Space session triggered by:

What projects are suitable for Agile?

This is my response.

To start, we should determine how we would assess our answer.  This leads to two more questions:

1. What does it mean for an approach to be "suitable" for a project?
2. What do you mean when you say "Agile"?

What does it mean for an approach to be "suitable" for a project?

I'll say that an approach is suitable for a project if, compared to alternate approaches, it provides a higher likelihood of project success.

Which leads to...

What defines project success?

The typical response might be "on time, on budget, on scope".  I'll say that this response is incorrect.

People don't fund projects in order to get something "on time, on budget, on scope"; they fund projects to get desired overall outcomes.  If I can get a better desired overall outcome that happens to not be on time, on budget, on scope, why would I consider that a failure?

But what about impact on other projects if this project is late, uses up too much available capital, doesn't complete dependent capabilities, etc.?  This is a good question and leads to...

Project outcomes can only considered successful in the context of overall organisational outcomes.

So if overall organisational outcomes are improved, it still doesn't matter if a project is "on time, on budget, on scope" per se.

This way of defining success is a typical difference in fundamental assumptions for non-Agile vs Agile approaches.  And this brings us to the second question...

What do you mean you say "Agile"?

I've blogged about what people mean when that say "Agile" before.

The short version is that when I say "Agile", I'm referring to Agile as a doctrine or culture, that is a set of fundamental principles and assumptions that guide behaviour.  This doctrine / culture is associated with a particular set of practices, but those practices are secondary.

The principles I consider primary are:

1. Reduce the distance between problems and problem-solvers
2. Validate every step
3. Take smaller steps
4. Improve as you go

So the question becomes, for what kind of projects are these principles unsuitable?

When someone asks the question "What projects are suitable for Agile?", I think they are inadvertently asking the question "What projects are more difficult to apply Agile principles?".  I can imagine that a particular type of project, with a particular level of team and organisational maturity, would find it so difficult to apply some or all Agile principles that the end result is unsuitability, that is, a lower likelihood of providing desired overall outcomes.

To sum up...

My answer to the question: What projects are suitable for Agile?

Projects where your team and organisation have the skill, maturity, and support, to apply Agile principles to successfully deliver desired overall outcomes.