Give a project manager a set of requirements and you’ll end up with what you asked for, hopefully on-time and on-budget. Try and change the specifications mid-way through and you’ll probably be told it’s just not possible.

Then you’ll be lectured about how you should have spent more time getting the specifications right in the first place.

If that sounds like a typical scenario in your business it might be time to change your approach to project management. Tim Molloy says human beings are notoriously bad at predicting what’s required, so we need a process that allows for changes as you become aware of what’s needed and of how the world is changing.

That’s, in a nutshell, what Agile is all about — it’s a way of managing projects with the flexibility to learn as you go. In effect you are breaking up major projects into workable, bite-sized chunks.

I talk to Tim about this approach in today’s program. He is the online evangelist at MYOB, Australia’s global finance software company. How they are using Agile to develop further iterations of the MYOB suite?

First published on CBS News