Agile Project Management
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Fast-moving project environments can be challenging.
Picture a start-up technology business, where the founders are trying to carve out a sustainable business niche. The sector is changing fast, and they must quickly develop a service that users are prepared to pay for. This is tricky!
They can only find out so much through market research, so they need to experiment. This means trying a variety of different offerings. Step-by-step, they need to learn from these and try improved offerings until they develop a solution that really works.
You can probably see that many work-related projects – particularly those involving complex, fast-moving situations – resemble this scenario. You can be working towards one deliverable or solving one problem, but then need to change course and revise your plans.
If you’re using a traditional project management approach, these revisions will lead to missed deadlines, inflated costs, and increased workloads. And, in a worst-case scenario, you can find that the situation has changed so much during the course of the project that your final product, when it is eventually delivered, is no longer relevant.
Agile Project Management is an approach that helps you deal with these challenges. In this article, we’ll describe what Agile is, and we’ll explain why it’s beneficial.
Agile Project Management is built around a flexible approach. Team members work in short bursts on small-scale but functioning releases of a product. They then test each release against customers’ needs, instead of aiming for a single final result that is only released at the end of the project.
The end product of an agile project may be very different from the one that was envisaged at the outset. However, because of the checking process, team members can be sure that the product is one that customers want.
This makes Agile Project Management particularly appropriate for new or fast-moving businesses, for those in a fast-changing environment, or for highly complex situations, where managers are “feeling their way forward” to find the optimum business model. It’s also helpful with urgent projects that can’t wait for a full, traditional project to be set up.
The elements of Agile Project Management have been around for decades. However, two events helped to lay the foundations for the approach.
First, in 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka published an article called “The New New Product Development Game” in the Harvard Business Review. In it, the authors outlined a new way of developing products that resembled a rugby match.
They imagined a project management approach in which, just as on the pitch, team members would achieve their goal by constantly re-evaluating the situation and responding accordingly. Projects would therefore evolve, but would lead to products that met customers’ needs more fully as a result.
The second event occurred in 2001, when a group of software and project experts met to discuss what their most successful projects had in common. They created the Agile Project Manifesto, which outlined the values and principles that underpinned Agile Project Management.
Agile Project Management is built on the product development approach of Takeuchi and Nonaka, and incorporates the values and principles outlined in the Agile Project Manifesto.
Let’s compare Agile Project Management with traditional project management to show how the approaches differ.
Ultimately, traditional project management is often best in a stable environment, where a defined deliverable is needed for a fixed budget. Agile is often best where the end-product is uncertain, or where the environment is changing fast.
Agile Project Management is also different from other project management techniques in the roles and events it uses. We’ve outlined these below.
The heart of Agile Project Management is the “scrum” framework. This uses specific roles, events, meetings, and increments to deliver a usable product in a specific time frame – for example, within 30 days.
The framework involves three key roles:
1. The product owner is an expert on the product being developed. He or she represents key stakeholders, customers, and end users, and is responsible for prioritizing the project and getting funding.
The product owner describes how people will use the final product, communicates customer needs, and helps the team develop the right product. His or her expertise also helps combat scope creep.
2. The scrum master is responsible for managing the process. This person solves problems, so that the product owner can drive development, and maximize return on investment. The scrum master ensures that each sprint is self-contained, and that it doesn’t take on additional objectives.
The scrum master oversees communication, so that stakeholders and team members can easily understand what progress has been made.
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3. The team is the group of professionals responsible for turning requirements into functionality.
The team will work on each project via “sprints” – short phases of work which deliver completed, tested, documented, and functioning products at their conclusion.
Each sprint begins with a sprint planning meeting. Here, team members decide what they can deliver within the agreed timeframe. They define the goal and assign task responsibilities.
During the sprint, team members focus solely on achieving their defined goal. They will meet every day for a 15-minute meeting to report on progress, to discuss what they will work on that day, and to talk through any challenges that they’re facing. (Meeting participants are encouraged to stand up so that meetings are quick and efficient.) These meetings are an essential part of the daily inspection process.
Teams are free to change their approach, based on what works for the specific project.
In Agile Project Management, there are regular opportunities for reporting on progress.
As well as daily scrum meetings, team members meet the product owner and key stakeholders after each sprint to present the sprint deliverable. In this meeting, the group decides together what they should change for the next sprint.
After this, the scrum master (and sometimes the product owner) holds a retrospective meeting, in which they look at the process that they used in the last sprint and decide what they can improve for the next one.
If you’re working with a virtual team, make sure that everyone is using the same instant messaging (IM) software to speed communication. Virtual meeting software is essential for daily scrum meetings.
Social media can also be useful for helping team members collaborate between meetings.
Agile Project Management aims to deliver fully working upgrades of a product or process on a regular basis – typically, every 30 days.
It’s ideal for software development and other projects where requirements are likely to change during the project – for example, in new or fast-growing businesses or in fast-changing business environments.
Teams are entirely self-managed and have the freedom to change their approach when needed. This flexibility can save costs and ensure that the final product meets customers’ needs.
Click on the thumbnail image below to see Agile Project Management represented in an infographic:
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Beck, K. et al. (n.d.) Manifesto for Agile Software Development. (Available here.) [Accessed 18 February 2013.]
Layton, M.C. (2012) ‘Agile Project Management For Dummies,’ Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Schwaber, K. (2004) ‘Agile Project Management with Scrum,’ Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press.
Takeuchi, H. and Nonaka, I. (1985) ‘The New New Product Development Game,’ Harvard Business Review, January. (Available here.) [Accessed 18 February 2013.]
Wernham, B. (2012) ‘Agile Project Management for Government. Case study: Case study: The Success of the FBI Sentinel Project,’ Talk given at the Agile Business Conference (ABC2012), October 2012. (Available here.) [Accessed 8 March 2013].
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