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There are two discussion posts. I have to reply to them based on their answer to the discussion board question. I have to reply to my opinion based on their answer to that discussion board question. Minimum words 450-500 each reply

Person 1 post: subash

The PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct is one of the guidelines proposed by PMI that helps an organization to make an ethical decision. This code revolves around responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty as the core values to help make wise decisions. The code defines aspiration standards and mandatory standards for each of those core values to determine what the code strives for and what the code requires as mandatory standards. With all these aspirations in consideration, this code assumes that any manager can make an ethical decision in most of the scenarios.

From the Agile project management perspective, there is another guideline to be agile compliant. This guideline is comprised of 4 values and 12 additional principles that form the foundation of the agile way of software development which is called the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto is a document that sets out the key values and principles behind the Agile philosophy and serves to help development teams work more efficiently and sustainably (What is the agile manifesto? n.d.). These values and principles are applied in all agile projects that help the project to be agile compliant and to gain benefits of agility. Though these values and principles can be categorized and use for the ethical decision-making process, these values are mostly directed towards benefitting the project in terms of values and efficiency. Since each of these values can be practiced by any agile organization, these values can also be part of organization policy and practice, making it a core part of ethics practiced by the organization.

The Agile Ethics and Values focuses on the agile principles and values that can be used as an ethical decision. This is primarily done by focusing on the benefits that agile project brings to the organization which is quick progress and higher value and return. These in turn translates into the responsibility, respect, and honest values of the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. While we are obligated as professionals to provide a valued product to our customers, it should not be at the expense of those doing the work (Sliger, 2009). The Agile Ethics and Values reiterate that the agile team should not exploit team members just to return the value product to the customer. This article primarily centers the ethical idea of an agile project on topics like focus, openness, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. In short, the Agile Ethics and Values explain the ethic of the Agile principles and values in terms of responsibility, fairness, and honesty (from PMI code values) towards customers.

Ethical issues are not always easy to resolve as an individual’s thought process, intelligence, surrounding environment, behavioral health, and ideology influence deciding what is right or wrong. As a result, the ethical value keeps changing and progressing along with the law, moral values, social norms, technology, and as a whole human civilization progresses. So an ethically right action in one place may not be right on the other organization based on the circumstances. So, there can never be concrete ethical guidelines that can fit all scenarios and I do not believe there will ever be a silver bullet to all ethical problems. We can only have abstract guidance that an individual or a team can interpret and modify to fit their needs. The agile manifesto, the PMI Code of ethics, and Agile Ethics and Values provide similar abstract guidelines which can be adjusted by an organization to meet their need in adopting ethical decisions. A lot of decision-making needs to rely on the experience of the project manager and depends on the need of the project and the expectation of the organization. There can be a conflicting scenario in the project where you may have to compromise one of the values from the PMI code of ethics and Professional Conduct to support another as only one could be applied at a time. The general code of ethics should just serve as an abstraction. Since each project and teams are different, ethical resolution can differ by project even for the same type of problem. Culture, requirements of project, expectation from team, confidentiality of project, belief of an individual in a team are all driving force that defines whether an action is ethical or not. Though the general code of ethics cannot provide solutions for all ethical issues, I do believe we can come off with an ethical solution for most of the issues based on this general code of ethics combined with our experiences, intelligence, and respect to legal and moral values. As a manager, we can use these guidelines or philosophies as a foundation for our solution, but we will need to consider a lot of things including but not limited to our experience, legality of the solution, ethic and conduct guidelines of the project, nature of project, culture, and belief shared by teams, etc.

References:

Miller, K. (2021, March 30). What Does a Project Manager Do? Northeastern University Graduate Programs. https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/project-manager-responsibilities/.

PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. (2021). http://moodle.amberton.edu/mod/resource/view.php?i…

Sliger, M. (2009, January 28). Agile Ethics and Values. AgileConnection. https://www.agileconnection.com/article/agile-ethics-and-values.

What is the agile manifesto? (n.d.). https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-is-agile-manifesto/. Agile manifesto for software development: Agile alliance.

Person 2 post: Sameer.

Ethical principles and the application of Agile Project Management in society

The article Agile Ethics and Values describes values that drive positive, collaborative behaviors and result in frequent delivery of working software in an ethical manner. The values mentioned and described in the article include commitment, focus, openness, communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect (Sliger, 2009). It is vital that in a team, members are committed and focused on doing what is necessary to meet the goal of the team or the organization (Sliger, 2009). There should be openness in keeping the project status highly visible to everyone all the time. Also, verbal communication plays a crucial role in clarifying ideas, solve complex problems, answer questions quickly, and help team members coordinate work efforts (Sliger, 2009). Moreover, keeping things simple can help teams expand it down the road as per the need, rather than creating something more complicated and unnecessary (Sliger, 2009). To provide value to the customer, feedback should be given and taken to make sure that the product is as per the customer’s need (Sliger, 2009). There are scenarios when team members need the courage to make decisions and sometimes say no, and this is just a functional value that gives rise to all the others (Sliger, 2009). Everyone in the team needs to be treated with respect regardless of their differences (Sliger, 2009). Working together with respect is a way to value colleagues and to contribute to a common goal as a whole (Sliger, 2009).

The article Agile Ethics and Values seems to be a common ground between the Agile Manifesto and the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. The Agile Manifesto value individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, responding to change over processes and tools, comprehensive documentation, contract negotiation, following a plan, respectively (Beck et al., 2001). It provides a set of guidelines to help teams do things and create products in a better way. In other words, it defines guidelines to manage the products and deliver a valued product to the customer (Beck et al., 2001). But it does not clearly define the professionals’ ethical practices that could impact the project and the resources. However, agile teams embrace ethical choices while delivering products of value to their customers.

The PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, on the other hand, defines, sets expectations, and commits project management professionals to do what is right (PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, 2021). They encourage practitioners to take ownership, respect everyone, treat fairly, and act truthfully to positively impact the project (PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, 2021). It encourages professionals to make ethical choices and decisions so that the whole project and resources positively impact them. When we analyze both the Agile Manifesto and the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, we can find a gap that the Agile Manifesto has in defining the ethical principles that are defined by the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

I think the PMI code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and Agile Ethics cover most of the issues that may arise in practice. When we analyze, the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct implements and encourages ethical solutions throughout the project lifecycle, and Agile Ethics focuses on delivering products with value to the customers while doing things the right way. However, depending on the organizational cultures, needs, and type of teams, there may be scenarios when these approaches may not yield a proper solution. Also, at times, solutions based on ethical choices are questionable in a corporate setting as they may not be the right solution for the growth of an organization. Therefore, it is right to say that these manifestoes and codes of conduct may cover and solve most of the issues; there might be ethical situations that are hard to interpret and make a call. The Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct can be implemented in any project to follow the right steps and be confident and become a better practitioner. At the same time, Agile Ethics provides guidelines and describes values that need to be implemented, so the products are developed and delivered with a high value following an ethical way.

References:

• Beck, K., Beedle, M., Bennekum, A. V., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M., . . . Thomas, D. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Retrieved June 19, 2021, from https://agilemanifesto.org/
• PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. (n.d.). Retrieved June 19, 2021, from https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/p…
• Sliger, M. (2009, January 28). Agile Ethics and Values. Retrieved June 19, 2021, from https://www.agileconnection.com/article/agile-ethi…