What is Agile Project Management ?

Agile Management is a method of project management that is non-hierarchical, iterative, and incremental way of managing design, and building engineering activities, information technology and other businesses. This is also highly flexible and interactive. It focuses on continuous improvements, scope, team input and delivering the products on the specified time.

It is a kind of method where the individuals interact over the processes and the tools. It requires comprehensive documentation about the processes and activities undertaken. It also promotes customer collaboration to constantly give their feedback and negotiate on the improvement of the product.

Agile also consists of its underlying principles:

1. Customer satisfaction. This method prioritizes customers and their satisfaction on the product. This can be achieved to quality made products and early or on time delivery.
2. It is flexible in nature. This method aims to achieve the goal of the business even when there are constraints. These constraints are resolved right away.
3. It also promotes short time scale in the deliverables.
4. The stakeholders engage in the business process and must work collaboratively.
5. This method allows its employees to work and decide on themselves. Trivial things are not escalated to the higher management unless necessary. It builds projects where their needs are being supported.
6. It promotes consistent communication through face-to-face conversations and it also allows resolving issues before it becomes bigger. The workers are informed accurately and in real time.
7. It provides a software that is responsible for the measurement of the works’ progress.
8. Technical excellence and good designs are also considered.
9. This method is simple and the tasks and activities are being optimized to come up with desirable results.
10. It has regular intervals so the teams can reflect on how to become more efficient.

An Agile project management consists of different stages:

Agile Stage 1:

The product owner formulates the vision and goal of the business processes. It is the definition of the what your product is, and how it will support the company to improve its strategies.

Agile Stage 2:

A product road map is made that serves as a framework to represent the requirements with loose time frame. It also identifies the requirements of the product and the project estimates.

Agile Stage 3:

It creates a release plan as to when the products are to be released.

Agile Stage 4:

Sprint planning sessions take place where the team identifies the requirements for iteration.

Agile Stage 5:

Daily meetings are held to give feedback and being able to apply them in the next cycle.

Agile Stage 6:

Sprint review is done to review that past processes and the actions taken. It also includes the possible constraints encountered and how these are resolved.

Agile Stage 7:

Sprint retrospective is the total review of the whole process.

This type of project management method also consists of people namely:

• The development team: These people are responsible for getting the activities and tasks done. They are the programmers, testers, designers or writers.
• The product owner: he is the expert on the product’s and the customers’ needs. The product owner ensures that everything is being catered and attended to.
• Scrum master: This person is responsible for supporting the development team through clearing the blockages.
• Stakeholders: These people are directly involved in the conceptualization, to the execution of the tasks and to the delivery of products.
• Agile Mentor: This is the person who has the experience and all the knowledge in the implementation of the agile projects.

Agile project management provides a quick summary on how to achieve the organizational and operational goals of the business. It also provides a full list of what is the scope of the project depending on the priority level. This gives the information on the product requirements and the complete time frame in task completion. It involves seeking alternative approach to conventional or traditional management. Its approach help the team respond to unpredictable event amidst the business process. It provides opportunities to assess the direction of a project throughout the development cycle. This is achieved through regular sprints or iterations and focuses on the repetition of the all the processes. This is an “inspect and adapt” approach to reduce expenditures by building the right product. It also empowers the teams to optimize their skills in performing the tasks.