It’s important to remember the strategy the project is expected to advance as well as the total cost of ownership and not just the project costs. In this way, the benefits of the project will be obvious, whether the team is constructing a building or developing a new business solution.

As such, many project managers feel that these techniques can be & should be applied to the construction industry also for larger benefit of society.

Applications of Agile Project Management Techniques in construction sector:

"Steve Eichert shares a story that sounds familiar:

When she started her basement project she had no idea what she wanted.  She knew she wanted a finished basement but she didn't know any of the details.  When Sonny (the contractor) asked her to tell him what she wanted she didn't know what to say.  Rather then try and force my mom into a strict plan Sonny decided to start with the most important aspects of the basement, walls!  As he finished each stage, he would come back to my mom (and dad) and ask them what was next.  A couple of times Sonny would finish something, but would then tear it down and do it another way based on the feedback he received from my parents.  Had the project been done differently this would not have been possible.  The incremental construction allowed my Mom and Dad to take a step back if they didn't like something, and it also allowed them to put off some of the details they weren't ready to think about.  In the end they probably spent a little bit more money, but, they were a LOT more happy.

The reason this sounds so familiar is that this same thing happened to me and my wife. Granted I was the contractor and she was the customer, but the process was the same. At first she knew she wanted a bedroom in the basement. She didn't really know how she wanted the hall layed out, where she wanted the doors or closets, etc. So I drew some chaulk lines on the floor and got her to talk about how it felt. Then I framed in the walls. During the framing we realized that one of the doors wasn't in a very efficient place, so we moved it. After the framing was done and the drywall was about halfway up, we realized that we should put a coat closet in. So down came a small chunk of the framing, in went a new pocket door and a closet was added.

This kind of thing is the essence of agile project management."

However, it’s much more challenging to implement agile methods in bigger projects involving acceptance of bids. Some of the key issues are:

¶ How to build up trust between client & contractor so that both are comfortable with idea of agile techniques: Customer will naturally be concerned over the facts that “deliverables have not been defined clearly”, “Scope may creep” & that “the contractor may use this as a tool to bleed money from him”.

Contractor might be equally concerned over possibility of his genuine investment getting blocked due to non-clarity on deliverables, scope & payment amount.

¶ How to evaluate & compare the bid cost? : Obviously, the contracts with Agile Project Management Techniques wont be fixed price contracts since the scope & the deliverables will change during the course of work & these changes may well be quite substantial.

A flexible “Matrix Solution” of costs for different possible technical alternatives at different stages would require to be worked out for implementing Agile Project Management techniques.  

Flexibility, Fairness & transparency in decision making system coupled with involvement of independent reputed adjudicators will help in making the Agile Project Management techniques work for the larger benefit of the society.