If you want to deliver more value, then stop using project delivery.

If you want to deliver more value, then stop using project delivery. It sounds controversial, doesn’t it?

But here’s the thing - You might be Agile, but you're not going any faster. Going faster means getting through your portfolio of projects quicker.

Many organisations have successfully transitioned to Agile ways of working. They might have implemented CI/CD, DevOps and Cloud infrastructure. But guess what? Their portfolio isn't getting delivered any faster.

And the culprit? The culprit is Project orientation and Project management.

Project orientation means that teams are committed to delivering the full scope of work of the project. You can quote MOSCOW and prioritisation, but that doesn't count when the stakeholder has an expectation that "everything must get done".

Even if the team were magically able to deliver the project faster than estimated, the original timeline is maintained because of Parkinson's law.

The scope is the work to be done. There are no shortcuts.

But here's the thing - the scope is not guaranteed to deliver the predicted value of the project. The value of the project was a guess made by a stakeholder.

If value is not guaranteed, then stop committing to doing full projects from now on.
Here's what to do -

➤ Break projects down into much smaller chunks that can be delivered independently - Do really good Discovery on them.
➤ Bring teams and work together into Big Room Planning.
➤ Bring stakeholders into the same room.
➤ Use the known capacity of teams to plan out small chunks of work, managing their dependencies and their capacity carefully.
➤ Measure results after a few weeks.
➤ Repeat

Here's why - when you break projects into small, manageable chunks, then people break out of the habit that whole projects must be completed at once. This gives teams adaptability, and it delivers value sooner. It creates urgency because the end is no longer "miles away", it's continuously here.

Even better - teams can pivot onto higher priority work once they have completed their latest chunk.

Low value work gets left on the cutting room floor.

➤ Discovery on Projects
➤ Split Projects into chunks
➤ Group planning
➤ Deliver value sooner