The Beginners’ Guide to Agile Project Management Methodology

If you are new to agile project management methodology, it might look at first like a complicated and difficult-to-manage system. But, whether you know it or not, you are already doing many of the things agile project management needs. With a few tweaks, you will be on your way to lower development cycles and smaller, more regular product releases.

Today, agile project management methodology is used by software developers, building companies, educational organizations, and even marketing teams. Many organizations can profit from agile project management, and it is simple to set up and use.

While you can take advantage of software, books, or agile coaches, any agile team is different, and learning the basics can aid you in putting together an agile project methodology that works for you and your team.

The Guiding Principles

• Agile project methodologies can be as different and unique as each team, but these 12 principles should always guide your decisions and product improvement. If you and your team are new to agile project methodology, it can be challenging to get out of the traditional waterfall project management mindset.
• Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes provide change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
• Deliver projects generally, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a decision for the shorter timescale.
• Coordinating team members must work together daily during the project.
• Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they require and trust them to get the job done.
• A face-to-face conversation is the most effective and effective method of communicating information to and within various teams.
• The ultimate product is the primary measure of progress.
• Agile methods promote sustainable development. All stakeholders should be able to keep a steady pace considerably.
• Constant attention to technical excellence and great design improves agility.
• Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.
• The best architectures, requirements, and designs stand from self-organizing teams.
• At regular periods, the team determines how to become more productive, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

The Team Members

All agile project methodology has its unique list of team members, and while the titles may change, there are a few universal things that agile team members should have:

• T-shaped: A valuable team member has a full breadth of basic knowledge about their subject but also in-depth knowledge, experience, and ability in one or more particular areas.
• Cross-functional: Cross-functional team members have skills outside their traditional areas. They might understand some basic graphic design principles and data analysis or even some HTML/CSS.
• Adaptable: If they have a different skill set, they know how to use it. No matter the environment, their output remains constant.
• Curious: Part of optimizing and becoming more active is asking the right questions and questioning the way words have always been when it is appropriate.
• Entrepreneurial: An agile team member is one that does not wait to be told what to do. They are ready to fill in and develop campaigns where they see a demand.
• Team-oriented: Team players prioritize the success of the team over their glory. If everyone is saving on time and syncing well together, they understand that as a win.

They are committed to excellence. One of the critical advantages of agile projects is delivering quality work faster. Team members who are committed to excellence do not settle for average. They are not hung up on perfection, but they are committed to always producing their best work.

The Basic Process

The purpose of agile is to produce more precise development cycles and more regular product releases than traditional waterfall project management. This shorter time frame allows project teams to react to changes in the client’s requirements more effectively.

You can use a few various agile project management frameworks - Scrum and Kanban are two of the most common.

Read: 7 Top Project Management Methodologies: Which Is Best?

But any agile project methodology will follow the same necessary process, which includes:

1. Project Planning

Like with any project, before starting your team should know the end goal, the value to the organization or client, and how it will be done.

You can begin a project scope here, but recognize that the purpose of using agile project management is to be able to address variations and additions to the project efficiently, so the project field should not be seen as unchangeable.

2. Product Roadmap Creation

A roadmap is a breakdown of the stories that will make up the final product. This is a crucial part of the planning stage because your team will make these individual features during each sprint.

At this point, you will also produce a product backlog, which is a list of all the features and deliverables that will give up the ultimate product. When you plan sprints, later on, your team will pull tasks from this supply.

3. Release Planning

In traditional waterfall project management, there is one performance date that occurs after a whole project has been developed. When using an agile project methodology, however, your project does shorter development cycles with features released at the end of each cycle.

Before kicking off the project, you will make a high-level plan for feature releases, and at the beginning of each sprint, you will revisit and reassess the release plan for that feature.

4. Sprint Planning

Before each sprint begins, the stakeholders require to plan what will be performed by every person during that sprint, how it will be done and evaluate the task load. It is necessary to share the contents evenly among team members so they can accomplish their assigned tasks during the sprint.

You will also want to document your workflow for team transparency visually, shared understanding within the team, and identifying and removing bottlenecks.

5. Daily Meetings

To help your organization accomplish their tasks during each sprint and assess whether any changes need to be made, hold short regular meetings. During these meetings, each team member will shortly talk about what they finished the day before and what they will be going on that day.

These meetings should be only 15 minutes long. They are not meant to be continued problem-solving sessions or a chance to talk about global news items. Some teams will even hold these meetings being up to keep it short.

6. Sprint Review and Retrospective

After the end of every sprint, your team will hold two sessions: first, you will continue a sprint review with the project stakeholders to give them the complete product. This is an essential part of keeping open communication with stakeholders.

An in-person or video conference meeting enables both groups to build a relationship and explain product issues that occur.

Second, you will have a sprint retrospective meeting with your stakeholders to explain what went well during the sprint, what could have been more helpful, whether the task load was too big or too light for any member, and what was achieved through the sprint.

If your team is new to agile project management, do not skip this crucial meeting. It assists you in gauging how much your organization can tackle during each sprint and the most efficient sprint length for future projects.

These are the most basic and essential elements of an agile project methodology. As you transition your team to an agile method, these processes, roles, and principles will aid you in changing your mindset and begin working together to be more flexible and adjust to differences as they come.