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For my husband, Chris, and my daughter, Izabella. I love you both so much.
This book would not exist were it not for the prompting of my husband, Chris, to step out of my day-to-day routine and follow a bucket list item to completion. Thanks also go to Will Panek, an accomplished author, a co-worker, and my foot in the door of publishing.
I also have to thank StormWind Studios for supporting me always and being an all-around amazing place to work and learn, as well as all of my students over the years who challenged me, learned from me, and in the end allowed me to benefit from their experience and their stories.
My thanks are also due to Gary Schwartz, for being one of the best editors in publishing to work with and for his tireless contributions to my very steep learning curve. And to all of those at Wiley who gave me a shot and who helped with this title, many thanks.
J. Ashley Hunt is currently an instructor of project management at StormWind Studios for Waterfall and Agile project management. She has helped certify over 10,000 students around the world in the PMI-ACP® Agile certification, Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification, and CompTIA Project +® certification, with a first-time pass rate of over 90 percent. Ashley has expertise in consulting globally for best practice implementation and certification in multiple project management best practices as well as leadership skills instruction.
She has over 20 years of public speaking and project management experience. She has traveled the world teaching and consulting in many industries, including government, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and technology. Ashley has authored over 150 courses that have been taught by her and others around the world. She enjoys engaging people in stories and taking large amounts of information and breaking it down into fun, real-world levels. This is her first published study guide.
There have been so many times in my career when people asked me what they should do in one situation or another on their projects, and my answer usually is something like, “It depends.” That is, it depends on the situation, it depends on your team, and it depends on your organizational processes. If something isn’t working, then it’s necessary to change it. Their response would often be that they couldn’t change it because of a lack of support from senior management or stringent guidelines set in place by a project management office (PMO). This circular conversation is ever present in a Waterfall environment. Once I started becoming more ingrained in an Agile environment, the conversation shifted from “What should we do?” to “What could we do?” And that shift changed everything.
Now when I’m presented with a problem in a process or a unique direction, we can all work together to figure out the solution, knowing full well that we will make mistakes but that we will also learn from them. This is why Agile frameworks are so exciting! “What is the simplest thing we can do that works” is an Agile mantra as well as a reminder that being able to pivot and adapt to our environments is something that has not been present in our projects for years. Now the ability to tailor and learn is becoming the best practice.
My hope for you is that as you learn more and adapt to new best practices, you will not only have more freedom to determine what works, but you will also experience the catharsis of knowing that if it doesn’t work, you will fix it in the next iteration, expand your knowledge, and work together with your team to find the best solution—not because it is dictated by rules, but because it is the best solution in the moment.