Agile for Project Managers

Denise Canty

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781498782685
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Manufacturing
• Index: Business

Agile project management is a proven approach for designing and delivering software with improved value to customers. Agility is all about self-directed teams, feedback, light documentation, and working software with shorter development cycles.The role of the project manager with agile differs significantly from traditional project management in th

Chapter 1

What Exactly Is Agile?

This chapter provides a detailed overview of the meaning of the word “agile” and its relevance to project management. Agility has become an increasingly popular method used to develop products across multiple domains; however, it is envisioned that a clearer understanding of the term can be attained when it is compared to traditional project management concepts.

Agile project management is an approach that is used to design and deliver software. To be exact, the agile approach delivers the software that has the greatest value to the customer. To be agile merely means to be quick. The definition of the word is rather easy to understand; however, quick is a comparative term used to describe the “degree of comparison between similar adjectives” (i.e., good or better). In other words, the word “quick” is appraised by comparing it to other adjectives with similar meaning with an end result that has the potential to be highly subjective. The assessment of the word “quick” is relative and is based on individualized perceptions. The best way to describe “quick” as it pertains to agile project management is “quicker than traditional project management methods.” Agility refers to the capability to think and reach conclusions quickly. Traditional project management methods include those that are defined in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK• Guide), Fifth Edition.* PMI describes traditional project management as “being accomplished through the application and integration of the 47 logically grouped project management processes which are then categorized into five Process Groups (i.e., Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing).” The project management methodology described in the PMBOK• Guide is based on a process-oriented approach whereas the agile approach is based on values and principles. We now discuss specific high-level reasons why agility has increased in popularity in recent years.

Agile Is Faster

Mathematically speaking, it is apparent that traditional project management is not as quick as the agile method with its 47 grouped processes and 5 process groups. In the case of agile, there are 4 values; 12 agile principles; and the Declaration of Interdependence (DOI) for Agile Project Management and its additional principles that tie together “people, projects, and value.”† A fact-based determination has just been made from the comparative assessment of the word “quick” as it pertains to the agile description. It has been successfully and objectively determined exactly what “how quick” means based on the number of processes that fall under agile and traditional project management methods, respectively. The lesson to be learned from the assessment is that whenever there is a project that needs to be done quickly, more than likely the agile approach would be best. There are, of course, other factors to take into consideration when deciding on agile or traditional project management. For example, one factor is project size. Additional factors for selecting an agile project are discussed in Chapter 15.

Agile Changes Are Inherent

When discussing agility, it is relevant to discuss change. That’s a word that hardly needs a dictionary lookup. Let’s examine the facts: technology always changes; software requirements change and in fact not much in society is constant. The world that we live in is very dynamic. Getting back to software, any information technology software professional will agree that making changes within a traditional software development project at the wrong time can be quite costly. In fact, the costs of software changes later in the life cycle are exponentially greater than changes made early on. For example, changes in requirements during the planning phase hardly cost anything; however, once the software code is in production, those changes can be very expensive. Traditional project management is all about plans and planning whereas agility is about adapting and very little or no planning at all. Plans always change because there are a multitude of unknowns in the traditional project management approach. Agile project management adjusts direction on...