Mapping Everything

I’m now working for a company that provides geographic information systems data and makes maps used by a lot of technical devices for navigation. This technology is highly data intensive. My backend (database) skills are definitely being used in this environment. With each new job position, where I am brought on as a project or program manager, I usually find it to be a waterfall methodology environment and I always try to convert them to Agile and Scrum. In this particular case, it took about 6 months before I finally convinced enough stakeholders about the true value of Agile and Scrum. We selected a pilot project, managed it with Agile and Scrum, tracked the metrics, compared it to other projects being delivered using waterfall, and our pilot project’s metrics were vastly better. Our stakeholders were impressed, but wanted to see more. We then started using Agile and Scrum for a couple more pilot projects, and after their successful deliveries, the company is now looking into rolling it out organization-wide. Turns out they were fed up about the number of projects which failed or had time or cost overruns using waterfall (not to mention dissatisfied internal and external customers).