Power of Paradox - Adaptive Efficiency
What is adaptive efficiency?
Adaptive efficiency is the ability to be both organized and flexible.
The paradox of adaptive efficiency is especially important for project managers.
In the project management world, there are two approaches when it comes to managing projects: waterfall and agile. Is one approach better than the other?
The Waterfall approach tends to be more structured and organized.
The Agile approach tends to be more flexible and quicker to adapt to change.
These two approaches to project management remind me of the Harrison adaptive efficiency paradox.
We will use the context of project management to illustrate this paradox.
Why adaptive efficiency is important in project management
Waterfall is the more traditional approach to project management that came out of the construction industry. It takes a more linear approach to projects and project planning and places a lot of emphasis on project planning and timelines or Gantt charts. Agile is a newer approach to managing projects that came out of the Agile Manifesto and software development.
Agile arose out of a response to create better ways of developing software that were more flexible – instead of spending a lot of time developing product features before getting feedback, Scrum teams work in two-week sprints. The reason agile arose was that there was an overemphasis on being organized and adhering to project plans and timelines without building in sufficient flexibility to make changes during the project.
This is what can happen when one trait – being organized, is overused, without the complimentary trait – being flexible.
The original Agile Manifesto states the following:
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
Keep in mind that Agile is a set of values and principles. In an of itself it is not a project management framework. The two predominant agile based project management frameworks are Scrum and secondly Kanban. Many organizations outside of software have adopted Agile based methodologies.
These methodologies still require people to be organized. The manifesto does not say that documentation and planning is not necessary, it states that they should be valued less than working software and being able to respond to change.
As more and more organizations have started to adopt Agile based methodologies, there is a danger of overvaluing flexibility over structure. This can cause other issues to arise, for example insufficient documentation may make it difficult for future teams to understand why certain things were done and make it more difficult to decide how best to implement changes to the code.
If an organization can implement either waterfall or Scrum projects, this provides them with the ability to select the best type of methodology depending on the project at hand. For projects with well-defined requirements and a stable scope, waterfall may be a better fit. For projects with more uncertain or changing requirements, agile may be more suitable.
This illustrates why paradoxical traits are powerful. It is not that we must always display both sides of the traits but rather that we have the ability to flex and tap into either trait when needed.
For more information on a framework to achieve project excellence as well as to learn about other Harrison Assessments paradoxical traits, check out my previous blogs.
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