1. Introduction

The UNITA Agile Management Guide defines the operational functioning of UNITA. Updated from phase one of the project, it allows each UNITA contributor to work efficiently and in the respect of UNITA criteria. The new guide reflects UNITA's commitment towards agile management in the development and functioning of an open, participative and multilingual European University of border, rural and mountain regions. This guide is alive and can be modified according to the project needs. This document will be updated, if necessary, through the lifecycle of the project extending the information given, including relevant issues and changes in the project or procedures. Each time the document is updated, all partners will be duly informed about the updates and the changes made with respect to the previous version.

Context and objectives

Context and necessity

The updated Management Guide has beed developed considering that:

The first phase of the European Universities Alliance UNITA (Nov. 2020- Oct. 2023) was concerned with initiating and setting up a functional framework for alliance cooperation, integration and governance from a managerial perspective. The alliance comprised 6 partner higher education institutions. As this was the initial phase, adjustments and changes were frequent in terms of role definition and allocation, management flows and interactions among responsible parties.
The second phase of the EUA UNITA (November 2023- 2027, ongoing) is focused on deepening the integration of the alliance, consolidating it, while simultaneously extending it to 10 partner universities, 2 university associated partners and 1 partner in the form of our legal entity UNITA GEIE. The focus of this phase turns to seamless processes and agile approaches to management of teams and activities.
UNITA's management does not refer solely to the projects which are central to our alliance, supported under the umbrella of the Erasmus+ European Universities Initiative, but also to what we have defined as the UNITA constellation of projects. This concept relates to complementary projects tackling specific matters of interest to our alliance in a more extensive manner while also being linked to the EUI projects of our alliance.
The initial six founding partners of UNITA have created a legal entity under the form of a European Economic Interest Grouping, to which the new full partners will adhere in the second phase of the alliance. The UNITA Universitas Montium EEIG is a full partner of the current EUI project of the alliance. The role of the legal entity is to contribute to the alliance's sustainability.
The UNITA Alliance enlargement from 6 to 13 partners requires a disciplined, efficient and transparent working method while avoiding useless formalities or unclear processes. Agile methodology for project management, with some adaptations, can provide an efficient working method and mindset for our challenging objectives in the next 4 years.

Objectives of the UNITA Agile Management Guide

Highlight the relevant managerial aspects of the alliance's EUI project, applicable as well to all UNITA constellation projects.
Set the rules and responsibilities of the partners for the purpose of ensuring a good quality and progress of the work envisioned in the UNITA actions.
Summarize all the required knowledge for an agile management of the project.
Contain all information related to the management structure, processes, documentation, collaboration tools to be used, reporting procedures, etc.
Develop a set of basic principles for the management of UNITA cooperation overall.

Relation to Other Project Documents

In the event of discrepancy between documents, this Management Guide is overruled by the Grant Agreement (s, valid for each project implemented by the alliance) including Annexes and the Consortium Agreement with possible addenda.

Agile project management in UNITA

The UNITA Alliance enlargement from 6 to 12 partners requires a more disciplined working method while avoiding useless formalities. To achieve this, UNITA decided to draw inspiration from an existing method: the PM AGILE method. This method, strongly influenced by the LEAN philosophy, encourages adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery and continuous improvement. It encourages rapid and flexible responses to change. To understand the difference between an agile approach and a traditional one in project management, the iron triangle provides a clear explanation.

The iron triangle in project management

The difference between agile and traditional approach is that with a traditional approach, scope is fixed and won’t change, but the time and cost can change. This means that projects can often deliver late or over budget affecting quality negatively. In agile approaches, the pyramid is inverted. Time and cost are fixed (e.g., time-boxed short cycles called Sprints), but the scope remains variable and can change. This ensures quality remains stable by prioritizing high-value features within constraints. With some adaptations, it can provide an efficient working method and mindset for our challenging objectives in the next 4 years.

Key characteristics of Agile are:

Focus on delivering value early and frequently. Decisions are based on what is known.
Close collaboration between all parties involved. Continuous stakeholder involvement at all levels.
Plans are created with the involvement of team members.
Incremental development with short cycles.
Scope management by continuous (re)prioritization of the Work Items. Embracing change, continuous learning and improvement.
Just enough documentation and control.

This method aims to continuously improve and streamline all project processes.

What is AGILE for UNITA?

This type of project management encourages collaboration and continuous improvement. It is referred to as an agile team. AGILE consists of dividing the project into several phases or cycles, and the various project activities are broken down into several specific, simple and prioritised actions.

1. Definition of an AGILE TEAM

Agile teams work in a highly collaborative way, adopting the most effective communication techniques for their situation and striving to work together as closely as possible. The aim is to ensure that:

Everyone feels part of the team, moving in the same direction.
The team includes all the people needed to complete the task. An autonomous team must have the skills and knowledge needed to get the job done. Specialists may be called in if necessary.
Each team member contributes according to his/her means. The team is made up of multidisciplinary members;
The team is self-organised. The people best placed to plan and organise the work are those who actually do the work. This results in more accurate estimates, more realistic deadlines and greater team commitment to the plan;
The team maintains a steady pace; everyone works closely together, avoiding discouragement.

2. Definition of an ACTION

An action may be defined as the result of a breakdown of a general activity in specific and simple operations, to be executed within one month, with a clear outcome.
An action is defined and detailed by an explicit specification sheet (cf the UNITA’s project management tools)

3. Definition of a CYCLE

Every month (at least), the task co-leaders plan, organise and coordinate a meeting with all the members of the task: the task meeting. A cycle is defined as the period between two task meetings. During this period, the team must work on the action(s) chosen at the meeting at the start of the cycle. At the end of the cycle, the actions are reviewed at the next meeting. Based on the progress made, the team then decides what action to take next: continuation, reorientation, stopping, etc. The team implements the decisions taken on the actions in progress during the next cycle.
A week before the task meeting, the co-leaders meet to prepare for the meeting and draw up the pre-minutes. They make these pre-minutes available to the task team members.
Depending on the actions to be implemented, they may decide to divide the work into sub-groups and schedule interim meetings.

Reference material

Although this Management Guide is self-contained, interested readers may deepen thier knowledge about Agile project management in the Agile PM2 guide, which extends and enhances the PM2 Methodology with Agile principles and practices.

Other bibliographic references: Articles in english to help you understand and go further

*Agile processes: a unifying approach for the future of projects*. Casanova, P. (2013). Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2013—EMEA, Istanbul, Turkey. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
*The iron triangle and agile*. Nagappan, R. (2020). Available at: [1]
*A Catalogue of Agile Smells for Agility Assessment* — Telemaco, Ulisses; Oliveira, Toacy; Alencar, Paulo; Cowan, Don. IEEE Access, 2020, Vol.8, p.79239-79259
*A critical examination of recent industrial surveys on agile method usage* — Stavru, Stavros. The Journal of Systems and Software, 2014-08, Vol.94, p.87-97
*AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: MODEL, METHODS, ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES* — Džanic, Amel; Toroman, Amel; Džanic, Alma. Acta Technica Corvinensis, 2022-10, Vol.15 (4), p.95-100
*An evaluation of the degree of agility in six agile methods and its applicability for method engineering* — Qumer, A.; Henderson-Sellers, B. Information and Software Technology, 2008-03, Vol.50 (4), p.280-295
*Challenges of adopting agile methods in a public organization* — Jouko Nuottila; Kirsi Aaltonen; Jaakko Kujala. International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, 2016-01, Vol.4 (3), p.65-85
*Collaborative agile learning in online environments: Strategies for improving team regulation and project management* — Noguera, Ingrid; Guerrero-Roldán, Ana-Elena; Masó, Ricard. Computers and Education, 2018-01, Vol.116, p.110-129
*EVALUATION OF THE MOST USED AGILE METHODS (XP, LEAN, SCRUM): RELATED TO THE CONCEPT OF TOYOTA QUALITY* — Nathan-Regis, Bodje N'Kauh; Balaji, V. International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology, 2012-01, Vol.4 (1), p.23-23
*Systematic Literature and Expert Review of Agile Methodology Usage in Business Intelligence Projects* — Wulandari, Hapsari; Raharjo, Teguh. Journal of Information Systems Engineering and Business Intelligence, 2023-11, Vol.9 (2), p.214-227
*The Role of Psychological Safety in Implementing Agile Methods across Cultures* — Thorgren, Sara; Caiman, Elin. Research Technology Management, 2019-03, Vol.62 (2), p.31

Conference papers in english

*Agile Methods: The Gap between Theory and Practice* — Conboy, Kieran; Eckstein, Jutta; Baumeister, Hubert. *Extreme Programming and Agile Processes in Software Engineering*, 2004, p.316-316
*An Ideal Process Model for Agile Methods* — Visconti, Marcello; Cook, Curtis R.; Bomarius, Frank; Iida, Hajimu. *Lecture Notes in Computer Science*, 2004, p.431-441

Book

*The Scrum Guide* — Jeff Sutherland & Ken Schwaber. Scrum.org; URL: [2]
*Succeeding with Agile* — Mike Cohn. Addison-Wesley; November 2009. ISBN: 0321579364
*Kanban: Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business* — David J Anderson. April 2010. ISBN: 0984521402
*Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process* — Kenneth S. Rubin. Addison-Wesley Professional; 5 August 2012. ISBN: 0988262592
*Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking* — Jeff Gothelf. Gothelf Group; 2017. ISBN: 13:978-1541140035

Book in french

*La boîte à outils de la conduite du changement et de la transformation* — Autissier, David; Johnson, Kévin J.; Metais-Wiersch, Emily; Moutot, Jean-Michel; 2019
*La boîte à outils du chef de projet* — Maes, Jérôme; Debois, François; 2023

Website

[3]

Youtube material

In english

In french

L' Agile qu'est ce que c'est et pourquoi choisir ce mode pour conduire un projet ?

Agile leadership in UNITA

To be effective in agile project management it is not sufficient to provide a set of techniques and tools to the teams (the doing agile). It is even more important to develop an agile mindset to become agile leaders (the being agile). UNITA adopts and implement by proper training and coaching sessions the principles of agile leadership provided by the not-for-profit organisation Agile business consortium. The table below shows how the nine principles of agile leadership align with the key concepts of Communication, Commitment and Collaboration:

The Nine Principles of Agile Leadership under the 3 C's are fully described below:

Communication

1. Actions speak louder than words Agile Leadership is about not only driving and promoting change, it is also about being the change. Those who lead by example and actively engage in their own development, inspire people. This is through action rather than words; as Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see”. Agile Leaders develop themselves to be humble and empathetic by demonstrating virtues such as compassion, kindness and care for their colleagues. Inspiring leaders work on themselves first before working on others.

2. Improved quality of thinking leads to improved outcomes Agile Leaders value high quality thinking which will result in meaningful action. Agile Leaders view problems from many different angles. They take input from those closest to the problem and this goes some way to ensuring that they are in touch with reality rather than relying solely on electronic information to inform their decision making. This also means allowing thinking time and focusing on the highest priorities at any given time.

3. Organisations improve through effective feedback Receiving feedback can often be perceived as a negative experience, so Agile Leaders lead the way by courageously soliciting meaningful, useful and timely feedback from peers and other colleagues. While requesting feedback is important, Agile Leaders take time to ensure that they are visibly responding to the suggestions made by their colleagues in order to close the feedback loop. Agile Leaders model giving effective feedback that is open, honest and respectful.

Commitment

1. People require meaning and purpose to make work fulfilling Agile Leaders focus on building and sharing a common understanding and purpose. There is a vision of change that is meaningful and applicable to the organisation. The work of the Agile Leader is to be aware of what is in the hearts and minds of their colleagues, and then to unify and align those values into inspired action.

2. Emotion is a foundation to enhanced creativity and innovation Agile Leaders inspire others to bring their best selves to their work. They understand that emotion is an important part of the human experience, and when individuals work with their emotions, they achieve more of their potential. Innovation and creativity rely heavily on respect that the Agile Leader encourages by being accessible, open, honest and transparent whilst expecting the same from others.

3. Leadership lives everywhere in the organisation Agile Leadership should permeate all aspects of an organisation or change initiative. Realising the leadership potential of all its people helps accelerate the organisation’s ability to learn and adapt. The work of an Agile Leader is to develop depth in the organisation’s leadership capability by providing opportunities for their people to lead. Mentoring tomorrow’s leaders in the principles and practices of servant leadership sows the seeds for the Agile culture to thrive.

Collaboration

1. Leaders devolve appropriate power and authority Agile Leaders recognise that people work best when they are enabled, engaged and energised. Empowering individuals is a necessary skill of the Agile Leader as they balance the emerging needs and tensions of the organisation. Agile Leaders recognise that empowerment is not an “all or nothing” concept. Instead, it is a continuum of leadership behaviour that responds to the current context for change.

2. Collaborative communities achieve more than individuals Agile Leaders build communities based on high trust, respect and meaningful working relationships. Their role is to provide those communities with all that they need to operate efficiently but then to let them function autonomously within their boundaries. The Agile Leader understands that forgiveness, positivity, generosity and gratitude are important parts of a healthy working environment. The healthy functioning of the group together with the preservation of psychological safety allow the Agile Leader to encourage learning and development whilst also balancing sustained output and performance for the benefit of the organisation.

3. Great ideas can come from anywhere in the Organisation People who are close to a problem usually have the best ideas about how to solve it. Agile Leaders allow themselves to be open to the influence and ideas of others, regardless of their status or position. To this end, the Agile Leader stops, listens and gives time to really hear the thoughts and ideas for improvement from their colleagues. Even if some ideas are not used, the Agile Leader encourages a continuous flow of creativity by helping people to understand which ideas were useful and which were not.

Feedback

Organisations improve through effective feedback

Receiving feedback can often be perceived as a negative experience, so Agile Leaders lead the way by courageously soliciting meaningful, useful and timely feedback from peers and other colleagues. While requesting feedback is important, Agile Leaders take time to ensure that they are visibly responding to the suggestions made by their colleagues in order to close the feedback loop. Agile Leaders model giving effective feedback that is open, honest and respectful.

Plan to give feedback

In this step, we’ll look at a method for thinking about how to plan what to say when you give feedback. This is the COIN feedback method (Carroll, 2018, p. 62). This method helps make connections between what you want to say in your feedback and what the recipient is looking for, as well as what the organisation needs. It presents four steps to giving effective feedback, as shown in the diagram below.

The COIN Feedback Method. Adapted from Mukherjee, S. (No date) *The COIN Conversation Model. Real-life Examples of Employee Feedback for Remote Teams*. [4]

The elements are as follows:

C is for connection and context

Try to establish what the recipient’s goals are in relation to the feedback conversation – what you want to deliver may not immediately fit with their requirements. For instance, if they want to know how to master a new skill, you need to connect the feedback to situations where you have actively witnessed them trying to work towards this target. To give context, you might say something like, ‘We have talked about you mastering a new skill in x, and last week I noticed you were starting to apply this in situation y‘ (if you don’t have a recent example, connect it to a past situation such as an earlier project). You can then start to link this to your feedback. Without establishing connection and context, you might find people become disconnected or confused by your feedback.

O is for observation

Here you make factual observations on someone’s work behaviour based on accurate and specific observations. If your observations are vague then this can lead to the recipient feeling confused or even ‘attacked’. Try to keep the observations ‘quick, accurate and to the point’ (Carroll, 2018, p. 63). You might say: ‘I noticed that you have not been to the last two morning standups and the project is due to go live next week’. The statement is based on fact and doesn’t seek to express a value judgement.

I is for impact

The impact of the behaviour you are feeding back on can be positive, negative or a hybrid of the two. Stick to the facts and help your team understand when their actions have negative effects. For example, you might say: ‘There were payments not paid on time to vendors on the project, which caused the project to fall behind. This had a negative impact on our relationship with the client.’

N is for next steps

At this point, you should collaborate with the feedback recipient to identify what action needs to take place, or what behaviours need to change or develop. Thinking about the future as part of your feedback can have a positive impact and help you get support from the recipient. For example, if a member of your team proposes a new tool for collaboration to help solve some of their time keeping and accountability issues, then you could say: ‘The idea of a collaboration tool is great and would help out the rest of the team. This will keep us communicating regularly and tasks will not be forgotten. When do you think you could demonstrate this to the rest of the team?’ (Carroll, 2018).

Tips for using COIN

The COIN steps are designed to help you provide objective information about what the person you are feeding back to is currently doing. It also gives you opportunities to collaborate on ideas about how things can improve in the future. The idea of this approach is that it ‘creates learning relationships and stimulates everyone’s desire for more feedback in your organisation’ (Carroll, 2018, p. 67). Carroll (2018) suggests that when giving feedback, you create a script in which you plan what to say around each of the COIN elements before giving your feedback.

Ideas for individual and team-based feedback

Often the word ‘feedback’ has instant negative emotional connotations for people based on their previous experiences. You may dread feedback rituals, and when this comes in the form of feedback that has been saved up for a long period of time, it can feel like an ambush rather than supportive. However, if feedback is carried out frequently, carefully and constructively, it can have a positive long-term effect on the recipient and on the culture of the team and the organisation.

Ideas for giving individual feedback

Giving individual feedback can often feel daunting, but remember that giving feedback is a two-way process. We must all learn to both give and receive feedback.

Here are some helpful hints when giving feedback. Make sure that:

You, as the feedback provider, are credible and trusted in the eyes of the recipient.
The feedback is conveyed with good intentions.
The timing and circumstances are appropriate.
The feedback is given in an interactive way, with a chance to raise questions.
The feedback message is clear.
The feedback is helpful to the recipient.

Used effectively, individual feedback will help people become more aware of their performance in the team.

Ideas for team-based feedback

Agile approaches to feedback encourage collaborative methods. Retrospectives are used by the team as a way to pause, consider their performance and discuss ways to continually improve. This technique is based on American writer and therapist Virginia Satir and colleagues’ work which explores the past in order to improve the future (Satir, Banmen, Gerber and Gomori, 1991). In a retrospective, four questions can be used to surface and communicate issues:

What went well?
What didn’t go so well?
What have I learned?
What still puzzles me?

(Source: Lyons and Waite, 2013)

Here are some further factors to remember when planning feedback:

Make room in the plan: How often is it appropriate for your team to carry out this type of reflection?
Action the learning: How will the learning from the feedback be fed into the next work phase? What needs to change?
Deal with the issues: How can you solve the things that still cause puzzlement?
Celebrate the successes: How do you recognise and reward team success?

It is important to remember that feedback is not about attributing blame. Both teams and individuals will be seeking feedback in order to gain awareness of themselves and how they are performing, and to use this for learning. Individual and team feedback should also be clear and ideally everyone should contribute.

One final model is the ‘rose, thorn and bud’ model

This is a simple, structured reflection which could be used when you are time poor (Gonzalez, 2020). Identify:

A rose: A highlight, success or small win.
A thorn: A challenge, or something you need help with.
A bud: A new idea or something you are looking forward to.

References

Lyons, C. and Waite, L.M. (2013) ‘The four questions of a retrospective and why they work’, InfoQ, 3 June. Available at: [5]
Satir, V., Banmen, J., Gerber, J., and Gomori, M. (1991) The Satir model: Family therapy and beyond. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.
Gonzalez, A. (2020) A mindful way to reflect: rose, thorn, and bud. Available at: [6]
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