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Hi everyone here. It's Ricardo Vargas and this is the five Minutes podcast. Today I like to talk about our endless dilemma of balancing executive demands for transparency, resources, deadlines, and at the same time, agility and the need for agility. And why I want to to say this because I think there is a lot of misconceptions when we talk about agility and control. Many people think that agility means zero control. This is not agility, or this is not an agile method. This is go horse. Go horse is exactly when you do nothing in terms of control and just let it go. And honestly. If this method was effective, we would be much more successful because we know many companies doing Ghost Horse and going nowhere. But Agile. Has controls. What is the difference is that in Agile you are not paranoid about control, you do not do a super detailed plan and try to give freedom and space for creativity, innovation, and change. And this is the difference. Many times, executives struggle to understand that for you to be agile, you need to give up. Certain controls. Because if you want to control the deadlines of every single day, if you want to have reports every single minute about everything that is happening. There is a strong chance. That people will spend most of their time doing reports. Then, producing the product. And this is the concept of Agile.
And I'm not here saying that everything should be done with Agile. But Agile is a perfect method when you want to do something that is exploratory, something that you do not know exactly how it will look like, and you learn, and you adapt. You learn and adapt. You produce, at minimum, a viable product or MVP. You learn, you test, you adapt. And this is absolutely perfect. For example, if you are using technology projects or for example, if you are doing AI projects, for example, at Moto, I had that all the time because when I started developing something, OpenAI release it something different, Microsoft release it something different. Google released something different. And I was struggling all the time to adapt to this new environment. And this is how the game is played. When you have an extremely volatile environment, it's impossible. For me to talk with Ricardo, the founder of Omoto, and say, Ricardo, this Ricardo is asking, I want deadlines, I want sharp. It's impossible because things are evolving, and they are evolving fast. So what is important is that first, we need to educate executives when we are doing extremely innovative projects. Because if we are working with disruptive innovation, if we are working with things that do not exist at all, that will create a revolutionary product. We need to give up certain controls, and we need to pay the price if things go wrong.
This is the risk when you are disrupting. On the other hand, if you are working in a very regulated environment, This freedom may bring you massive amounts of risk, for example, if you work in financial markets. And someone creates a super innovative idea of implementing, for example, a product on your online banking. These. If done wrongly. It can jeopardize your company's risks. So, what is important is that you understand what is at stake. And this is why the title of this episode is Balance Demands with Agility. Because there is a trade-off. And this is why, for example, hybrid methods are taking a lot of space because they are. Exactly. This is the middle point. Balancing, okay? How fast I can go without losing the full control. So, how do I balance that? How do I stay somewhere between 0 and 100? And this is exactly why we need to think that the middle is always one of the best approaches. And this is for everything. Every time I discuss with project managers, it's very common that I see this opposite polarized discussion between those who truly believe that incremental projects are the only way of delivering projects. They think that cascade. Waterfall. R is the only option for you to deliver successful projects. And then on the other side, there are the agilists where they think that only agile can deliver.
And honestly, I worked with this for 28 years. I would love to find an answer that would be as easy as this or that. Most of the time. It's everything. At the same time. It's everything. And this is why a competent project manager knows how to balance this. Take pieces of the project and give a more agile approach. Take a piece of the project where the risks are too high or what is at stake is too high. And simply create more controls for that. So don't think that by using Agile you are assuring the success of your project or by using waterfall, you are assuring that it's not as easy as you think. So, always think that you need to balance the interests of the stakeholders and you need to balance the methods. Apply different methods to different parts of your project and balance all these interests. Put transparency where transparency is required and is extremely important, but don't create controls on the top of things that are just irrelevant. And this is the secret. And this has no recipe or mathematical recipe. This is based on experience and the type of project. This is why great project managers always look to develop their experience in different projects. This is what makes them great project managers. Think about that and see you next week with another five minutes podcast.
