What is Agile Project Management? [2022]

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Agile Project Management – at least its initial incarnation – was created to balance risk and accomplishment in developing, testing, and deploying an innovative product. This meant that a product (or even a service) was created or has evolved using rapid prototyping and iterative testing, where changes and improvements were accomplished very quickly. This was the proverbial silver bullet approach to software development, and it worked!

The first version of agile was explicitly built for this purpose. It provided “pull-based” development, where work was completed to a set of agreed-upon milestones and these were reviewed and prioritized at each stage of the process. The goal was to prioritize and rework the entire development life cycle (DTL), which is inherently risky until a product is ready for testing or deployment.

A Brief History of Agile

The infamous “application development crisis” of the early 1990s catalyzed the catalyst for everything. Between a business need for an application and the actual software delivery, there was a considerable three-year lag period back then. 

By the time the final product was released, technology had frequently advanced or client needs had fundamentally changed. Numerous failed ventures and sunk costs were the outcomes of this.

Thought leaders in the software development business were frustrated by those extraordinarily extended project lead times. To find a means to develop software solutions more quickly and efficiently, they started setting up informal meetings among themselves.

Agile Project Management Values

• People and interactions above procedures and equipment.
• Working software is preferred over thorough documentation.
• Collaboration with the customer during contract negotiations.
• Adapting to change as opposed to sticking to a plan.

Agile Project Management Principles

1. Customer satisfaction is achieved through consistent product delivery.

2. Break up massive activities into manageable pieces for quicker completion and simpler change integration.

3. Comply with the deadline for functional product delivery.

4. Regular collaboration among all stakeholders is necessary to ensure the project is moving correctly.

5. Foster a positive work environment that will inspire team members to be productive.

6. Choose in-person communication over other channels.

7. The most important metric for progress is functional software.

8. Make an effort to keep up a steady rate of development.

9. Maintain the product’s quality by paying close attention to the technical aspects.

10. Keep things simple.

11. Encourage the team to work independently.

12. Consistently evaluate your performance in order to get better.

Agile Project Management Methodology

Projects are divided into manageable portions using the Agile project methodology. These project components are finished during work sessions known as sprints. Typically, sprints last a few days to a few weeks. These meetings include everything from the early stages of design to testing and quality assurance (QA).

Teams are able to publish segments as they are finished using the Agile process. Teams can demonstrate that these parts are successfully using this continuous release plan; if and if not, they can immediately address any issues. Because of the ongoing improvement throughout the project lifecycle, it is thought that this reduces the possibility of catastrophic failures.

Building an Agile Workflow

Enhanced visibility in the way work is managed is a key component of the Agile workflow process. You may identify issues early and respond to them quickly in this way. By combining this with the notion of reducing work batch sizes and delivering to the market more frequently, you may develop a value-based process that successfully satisfies consumer needs.

To put all of that into action, you must first have a mechanism to map your current processes in order to unlock optimization potential and search for enhancements. Agile teams do this by using a paradigm called “Value Stream Mapping.”

• Value Stream Mapping as the Foundation for an Agile Flow
• Building an Agile Workflow and Creating a Value Stream in Practice
• Using Continuous Improvement to Create a Fluid Agile Process
• Implement feedback loops and evaluate the effectiveness of your workflow

What Is Agile Planning?

Understanding that Agile planning is applicable at every level of the project is crucially important. Agile is not only practiced at the team level (Day, Iteration, Release). Agile portfolio management, Agile strategy, and Agile product management are all options. Business agility in general is defined as being flexible in your approach.

Agile planning is iterative, as we just mentioned but did not elaborate on. This implies that you create and modify your plan several times, as necessary. The objective is to spend time planning at the ideal time and readily adjust to changes if they arise during the execution phase.

No matter what level you work at, your Agile project plan will share some common traits. The following are the steps involved in agile planning: 

• The objective as seen by a customer
• When possible, avoid leaving out important details 
• Periodic deliveries 
• Date ranges as opposed to individual date estimates 
• Put the task first, not the employee 
• There are no distinct phases for quality control 
• Plans with two levels 
• Data-driven

Agile Implementation

The likelihood that a project will succeed can be significantly increased by including Agile in your project management process. However, due to a lack of leadership, knowledge, and expertise, many organizations struggle to adopt Agile project management.

Since there is no 100% guarantee that the change will go smoothly, several aspects of your business and culture must be examined and ready in order for the Agile implementation to be effective.

For your firm to be truly agile, you need to assess and improve on seven key issues for smooth agile implementation. They are:

• Concentrate on Flow Efficiency Rather Than Capacity Utilization
• Control Queue Size Instead of Timelines
• Streamline Work Item Batch Size
• Develop Work In Progress (WIP) Constraints
• Add Quick Feedback Loops
• Make decisions in a decentralized manner

Agile Metrics

• Lead and cycle time are two crucial Agile project metrics that originated in the area of lean management. Both display the amount of time work items spend on a particular procedure.

• Throughput in Agile refers to the typical quantity of work items processed per unit of time. For instance, in a Kanban system, where work is represented by cards, throughput is determined by counting how many cards were finished during a specific time frame (weekly, monthly, etc.)

• Another of the most crucial Agile KPIs is working in progress. It just displays how many work items you presently have “in progress” in your working process, which makes it rather simple.

• Work item age, also known as aging work in progress, is the amount of time that has transpired between the beginning and the present moment of activity. Only unfinished work items are a useful leading signal for this Agile project statistic. The cycle time—a suitable metric for completing work items—is complemented by it.

• Another one of the most significant Agile project metrics is flow efficiency. It demonstrates how quickly you can do tasks from beginning to end. You must divide the value-added time by your total lead time, which includes any stages when no active work is being done, in order to calculate it.

Structuring Work with Agile

Fragmenting complex work into smaller work items is known as agile work breakdown structure (WBS). WBS is a frequently employed project management tool. WBS is used by both prescriptive and adaptive techniques to visualize smaller work items, break down larger work items into manageable chunks, and establish a hierarchy of work between them.

For example, work breakdown structures are used by agile development teams to better organize their work using themes, epics, features, or tasks. However, this Agile structure is not predetermined from the start of the project, unlike traditional management. Instead, it takes into account new job specifics, evolving requirements, and external or internal input.

Given that stakeholders and Agile team members can see the project’s foundational components and the task at hand, a transparent Agile hierarchy improves alignment and fosters collaboration.

Benefits of Agile Project Management

Since the establishment of the Agile manifesto, an increasing number of businesses outside the sector have begun to recognize the benefits of Agile project management over the conventional method.

Here are the top five crucial advantages of Agile:

1. Reduced Risk
2. Higher Chances of Meeting Customers’ Expectations
3. Metrics for Efficiency and Data-Driven Decision Making
4. Improved Performance Visibility & Transparency
5. Better Team Collaboration  and Continuous Improvement

Drawbacks of Agile Project Management

Agile project management comes with a lot of benefits, however, there may also be drawbacks, such as the following:

• Because there are fewer predetermined paths of action at the beginning of a project, it is possible for it to get off course.
• Projects that go off course produce less predictable results.
• Agile management is not appropriate for firms that spend a long time studying problems because it depends on making choices rapidly.
• To create the greatest product possible, teams or end users must frequently collaborate. Communication problems could have an effect on the final output.

Agile Best Practices

You cannot adopt a single best practice and refer to your team or business as “agile.” Instead, start by developing an Agile mentality, and then experiment to determine what works best for you.

But you still need a place to start. Therefore, some of the most effective Agile approaches for project planning, execution, and monitoring that you may use are:

• Make multiple plans and give customer collaboration top priority.
• Downward power cascade.
• Utilize probability and time intervals.
• Transparency can be achieved by integrating strategy and implementation.
• Depict the workflow.
• WIP cap and queue management.
• Reduce the number of work items in a batch.
• Sync daily progress.
• Monitor and gauge flow metrics.
• Regularly conduct reviews.

Getting Started with Agile Project Management

These are the fundamental components of Agile project management. These procedures, Agile software and tools, roles, and concepts can assist you as you start your team’s shift to an Agile approach by helping you alter your perspective and start cooperating so that you may be more adaptable to changes as they occur.

Although agile isn’t for everyone, organizations that apply it well will reap huge benefits, such as streamlined business operations and quick innovation.

For courses on project management and tools please check our course list.

For more information on project management software and methodologies read our blogs.

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Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!