In 2001, a group of agile management experts met and in three days accomplished something remarkable: they came to an agreement on some core values and principles, known as the Agile Manifesto. The approach they invented, saying “we value X over Y,” has great power to express culture change in a non-threatening way. In 2012, Rob Newbold and Bill Lynch started experimenting with the same formula to describe the culture change needed to implement effective critical chain project management. This led to their book The Project Manifesto, which describes four values modeled on the Agile Manifesto. At the TOCICO International Conference in Potomac, Maryland in June of 2014, a number of experienced consultants and practitioners agreed that this formulation would be very useful in describing some key components of good project management, and is compatible with various current management approaches, including Critical Chain project management, Agile software development, and Kanban. These individuals therefore agreed to become initial signatories to the Project Manifesto.
The “relay race” or “relay runner” approach says that in order for work to flow quickly and effectively, it should be completed as quickly as possible with minimal interruptions and multitasking, and then handed off. Focus and finish. Unfortunately, running the relay race typically conflicts with the “good citizenship” values that dominate in many organizations today: being responsive, getting work started, hitting deadlines, and hitting individual goals. The Project Manifesto values suggest a way to resolve these conflicts, helping to describe the change from the traditional values to the relay race. The traditional good citizenship values are not bad, but they must be put in context of why people are employed in the first place: to help the organization achieve its goals.