Agile Meridian, “Agile vs. Traditional? Breaking the False Binary Podcast,” November 25, 2025.
Breaking the False Binary Podcast
Project Management is at a crossroads. Waterfall interest has declined, Agile peaked in 2022 and seems to be in free fall, and everyone’s talking about AI—but what actually works?
In this episode of The Disruption and Innovation Podcast, Kumar Dattatreyan, ICF PCC sits down with Alan Zucker, founder of Project Management Essentials and veteran of over 25 years leading Fortune 100 transformations. Alan has a unique perspective: he was living business agility at MCI Communications a decade before it was codified, led the agile transformation of 170+ project managers at Fannie Mae, and now bridges the worlds of traditional and agile project management.
In This LIVE Episode, We Explore:
✅ What made MCI’s disruptive culture work before “agile” existed—and why it matters today
✅ The quiet identity crisis happening in project management right now
✅ Why “projects” became a dirty word in agile circles (and why that’s wrong)
✅ How Alan got teams to organically adopt practices that matched 50% of Gartner’s agile accelerators
✅ The three simple rules for high-performing teams that most organizations ignore
✅ What “intentional hybrid” actually means in practice
✅ Why culture change campaigns fail 75% of the time—and what works instead
✅ The AI disruption: Are consultants competing with ChatGPT?
About Alan Zucker:
Alan has delivered thousands of successful projects and managed multi-million dollar programs. He founded Project Management Essentials in 2016 to share his passion for practical, people-centered transformation. He’s an adjunct instructor at George Mason University and has published over 150 articles on project management, agile, and leadership.