Next practice in agile project management: Putting tailoring into agile transformation
Fangyuan Shen, Ian Stewart · Project Leadership and Society · 2025
Agile transformation in projects requires configuring agile practices and frameworks to better fit project needs, goals and circumstances. It is rarely delivered through a systematic process, thereby challenging transformation performance and leading to dissatisfaction and failure. We propose a new, analogical tailoring process model, based on the interactive garment tailor-customer process of garment tailoring, and empirically examine the validity of the model through eight semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion with agile coaches and project team members. A refined analogical agile tailoring process model is structured to reflect steps for both agile coaches and project teams to exchange, collaborate and achieve agile transformation in projects. The practice innovation we present demonstrates the process-based interactions required to increase the degree of fit of agile techniques and create a stronger agile coach-client team relationship. It clarifies the process for agile transformation at project level and presents a critical view of tailoring that is largely missing from the project management literature. • Agile transformation is not a “one-size-fits-all” process. • Tailoring is a distinct process and is not just selecting, customising, or modifying an agile methodology. • Agile coaches facilitate the tailoring of agile techniques during transformations. • Tailoring interactions promote a negotiation process to align expectations. • Agile method tailoring advances agile projects toward the next practice: configuring a fit-for-purpose method.