Mindfulness of Agile Project Management

Projects that develop and implement over many years in today’s rapidly changing technological environment do run the risk of being obsolete when they are finished. Agility, adaptability, quick response to change and fast time to an implementation or to market is sorely needed in today’s PM process.

There always seem to be new project management processes, techniques, and systems coming along which are designed to change whatever methods are being used today. Perhaps it happens because there is so much cost overrun, schedule overrun, and project failure with current project management systems? Agile Project Management is certainly worth examining. Many successful project managers may find they already employ many of these phases and practices to some degree anyhow. Since agile development model is different from conventional models, agile project management is a specialized area in project management.

The term 'Agile' is an umbrella used for identifying various models used for agile development, such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, SAFe etc.

Agile Project Management is one of the revolutionary methods introduced for the practice of project management that is mainly applied to project management practice in software development. Therefore, it is best to relate agile project management to the software development process when understanding it. It reduces complexity by breaking down the many-months-long cycle of building requirements for the whole project, building the entire product and then testing to find hundreds of product flaws. Instead of small, usable segments of the software product are specified, developed and tested in manageable, two- to four-week cycles.

There are different versions and flavors of agile, and frankly, a lot of people subscribe to the view that their methodology is better than everybody else’s. There’s no standard way of doing it... you’ve got to do what works for your organization, your culture, and your people. “But we do daily stand ups. We’re Agile.”

Not so fast. Before you can say your team is agile, it’s important to have a good understanding of What is agile? and What are some of the agile roles? Agile project management is a value-driven approach that allows Project Managers to deliver high-priority, high-quality work and look like rock stars to their stakeholders. The spirit of agile and being agile is about the customer telling us what to do, what to prioritize, how to work. It’s not until you connect your work all the way to the customer... that you’re being agile. In the original Agile manifesto, there was a strong focus on individuals and teams rather than processes imposed from the top down, are as follows:

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
4. Responding to change over following a plan

From the inception of software development as a business, there have been a number of processes following, such as the waterfall model. With the advancement of software development, technologies, and business requirements, the traditional models are not robust enough to cater the demands. It then introduces the reader to the 12 principles as written in the Agile Manifesto.

1. Highest priority is to satisfy the customer through the early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is a face-to-face conversation.
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
10. Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. It all comes down to how quickly one wants to embrace change and there are large companies who move at lightning speeds.

Software projects change constantly. When customers are expected to finalize requirements before they can test-drive the prototypes, overhead and long delays often cripple the project. Agile Project Management is about embracing change, even late in the development stage. It’s about delivering the features with the greatest business value first and having the real-time information to tightly manage cost, time and scope.

Whether you have just wondered about agile project management or dipped one toe in, you would probably agree: the role of the Project Manager can seem impossible. Customers expect quality software on time and on budget. But Wait! The requirements just changed. Again. Sound familiar?

Scope Creep is truly a modern corporate horror defined as incremental change demanded by a stakeholder who can't be refused, and which negatively stresses the original project definition, schedule, and budget. Scope Creep happens when design, development or production processes are interrupted by a product manager, company leader, investor or other authority hollering last-minute or even mid-project for a new feature or function or design change motivated by some strategic partnership, market movement, investor demand, etc.

Truth be told, the current anticipatory project management process is somewhat inflexible and is not versatile enough to easily handle changing requirements and user expectations without additional cost, work or that horror "Scope Creep"

In traditional waterfall project management, the Project Manager is burdened with balancing project scope, cost, quality, personnel, reporting, risk, and adapting as requirements change. Agile project management divides these overwhelming responsibilities among three agile roles:

1. The Product Owner handles setting project goals, handling the tradeoff of schedule versus scope, adapting to changing project requirements and setting priorities for product features.
2. The ScrumMaster guides the team to prioritize their tasks and removes impediments to handling their tasks. Agile project management with scrum is an entirely new world!
3. The Team Members directly handle most of the task assignment, daily detail management, progress reporting and quality control for the product.

The Agile Process

Agile project management processes are interesting indeed therefore, especially for those of us who have worked in an anticipatory environment where early on in a project we've captured user requirements and needs, created the plans and schedules and started the project only to find out that many changes were needed and were difficult or impossible to make in our somewhat rigid methodology. It is required for one to have a good understanding of the agile development process in order to understand agile project management. There are many differences in agile development model when compared to traditional models:

1. The agile model emphasizes on the fact that entire team should be a tightly integrated unit. This includes the developers, quality assurance, project management, and the customer.
2. Frequent communication is one of the key factors that make this integration possible. Therefore, daily meetings are held in order to determine the day's work and dependencies.
3. Deliveries are short-term. Usually, a delivery cycle ranges from one week to four weeks. These are commonly known as sprints.
4. Agile project teams follow open communication techniques and tools which enable the team members (including the customer) to express their views and feedback openly and quickly. These comments are then taken into consideration when shaping the requirements and implementation of the software.

Scope of Agile Project Management

1. In an agile project, the entire team is responsible for managing the team and it is not just the project manager's responsibility. When it comes to processes and procedures, the common sense is used in the written policies.
2. This makes sure that there is no delay is management decision making and therefore things can progress faster.
3. In addition to being a manager, the agile project management function should also demonstrate the leadership and skills in motivating others. This helps to retain the spirit among the team members and gets the team to follow discipline.
4. An agile project manager is not the 'boss' of the software development team. Rather, this function facilitates and coordinates the activities and resources required for quality and speedy software development.

Responsibilities of an Agile Project Manager

The responsibilities of an agile project management function are given below. From one project to another, these responsibilities can slightly change and are interpreted differently.

• Responsible for maintaining the agile values and practices in the project team.
• The agile project manager removes impediments as the core function of the role.
• Helps the project team members to turn the requirements backlog into working software functionality.
• Facilitates and encourages effective and open communication within the team.
• Responsible for holding agile meetings that discuss the short-term plans and plans to overcome obstacles.
• Enhances the tool and practices used in the development process.
• An agile project manager is the chief motivator of the team and plays the mentor role for the team members as well.

Agile Project Management does not:

• manage the software development team.
• overrule the informed decisions taken by the team members.
• direct team members to perform tasks or routines.
• drive the team to achieve specific milestones or deliveries.
• assign task to the team members.
• make decisions on behalf of the team.
• involve in technical decision making or deriving the product strategy.

In agile projects, it is everyone's (developers, quality assurance engineers, designers, etc.) responsibility to manage the project to achieve the objectives of the project. In addition to that, the agile project manager plays a key role in the agile team in order to provide the resources, keep the team motivated, remove blocking issues, and resolve impediments as early as possible.

In the truest sense, an agile project manager is a mentor and a protector of an agile team, rather than a manager. So how agile is your workplace?