The comprehensive guide to agile project management methodology

Why do you need agile project management?

Over the last decade, agile methodology in project management has gained popularity among project managers for running their projects efficiently and delivering value to customers. The concept of agile methodology is known to everyone, but why do you need to be agile in project management? Here are several reasons why you need agile methodology to operate projects successfully.

• Agile methodology projects focus on incremental delivery of value to customers, enabling them to use the product sooner and provide constructive feedback for changes. This approach helps deliver an error-free and satisfying final product.
• Continuous feedback from stakeholders allows the project team to iterate and adjust the product faster to align with requirements, resulting in less rework and lower costs.
• Responding and adapting quickly to changing industry dynamics and customer needs results in achieving optimal customer satisfaction and a better position in the market among competitors.
• Agile methodology emphasizes open communication with stakeholders and clients, promoting transparency and clarity for decision-making. This results in timely development and faster releases to the market.
• Delivering in incremental cycles allows teams to detect and respond to potential risks quickly and make informed decisions at the early stages of the project, leading to fewer project failures.

Benefits of agile project management

• Higher customer satisfaction - Every process of agile methodology in project management is tailored towards delivering value to the customer. Keeping customer feedback at the forefront of task initiatives ensures that they are satisfied at all times.
• High product quality - Agile methodology follows an iteration-based approach. Feedback from both customers and stakeholders is incorporated into succeeding work cycles. This helps teams eliminate mistakes, faults, and continuously deliver a better end product.
• Allows for change - Teams that follow an agile management structure are flexible and responsive towards change. Agile ceremonies, specifically daily scrums, let them assess their progress regularly and make changes depending on the various situational factors.
• No unpredictable delays - Work cycles in agile project management are purposely short in nature. Breaking down large chunks of work into micro-cycles allows for more precise planning, tracking, and resource estimation, greatly reducing the probability of unexpected bottlenecks.
• Team dynamic gets better - Agile project development teams succeed because of their transparency and collaborative efforts. All members regularly interact through various agile ceremonies and are always in the loop regarding the overall progress of any project.

Who can benefit from agile project management?

When we are making breakthroughs in science and technology every day, embracing change has become second nature. It's almost Darwinian to say that if you don't keep improving, you're going to become obsolete. We make plans and drop relationships with a single text. In a sense, aren't we all agile?

The agile project development approach, which started out as an experiment for software-practitioners, has insinuated itself into every industry as a productivity mantra. Marketing, advertising, event planning, publications, and even food distributors have used agile knowledge to turn their luck around. We could almost call it a New Age Movement.

The five phases of agile project management

Jim Highsmith, one of the original co-authors of the Agile Manifesto, introduced the five phases of agile project management. These points draw parallels to the five phases of project management. The phases have been used to provide a descriptive (rather than prescriptive) way of adopting agile project management.

• Envision

  The envision phase is the foundation of agile project management. Here, the project vision, scope, and goals are defined. During this phase, stakeholders and the project team come together to establish high-level objectives, set milestones, and identify potential challenges. It is an important phase that sets the groundwork for the project and aligns the team and stakeholders around a shared vision for achieving a successful project.

• Speculate

  The speculate phase sets the direction to start work on the project in a systematic and planned manner. This phase involves translating and breaking down large-scale objectives into workable items, detailed planning, creating a roadmap, and outlining how to achieve project goals. In the agile approach to project management, teams utilize this phase to set flexible timelines to adapt to changes based on continuous feedback loops, prioritize work, set team-level milestones, and prepare for efficient project execution.

• Explore

  Once scope setting and planning are complete, the explore phase kicks off. This is where planning turns into execution. During this phase, the product starts taking shape through iterative cycles called sprints, involving a continuous series of developing, testing, and refining. The explore phase is the heart of agile project management, embracing flexibility and improvements based on feedback to steer the project towards its goals.

• Adapt

  The adapt phase emphasizes on agility through adapting, improving, and refining based on constructive feedback. In this phase, the team takes a step back to reflect on what went well and what didn't, brainstorming solutions to improve processes and team dynamics to ensure the project progresses in the right direction.

• Close

  This phase marks the end of a project's lifecycle. Here, the team finalizes deliverables, ensures that everything about the project is properly documented, and confirms stakeholder satisfaction before formally closing the project. During the closing phase, the team thoroughly reviews the project from start to finish to identify areas for improvement, capture lessons, and celebrate achievements before the formal conclusion.

Types of agile methodology frameworks

Agility is the umbrella term beneath which many frameworks have mushroomed over the years. It's a mindset, and a framework is a set of rules with which you can convert lofty principles into tangible practices that you can incorporate in your work.

There have been many frameworks over the years. Here are a few popular frameworks within the agile methodology.

• Scrum

  Scrum is an iterative incremental approach to software development under agile project management and is the most popular framework under the agile methodology. In Scrum, you split your work into chunks on which you work for set periods of time. These time boxes—called sprints— are tracked on a Scrum board and should result in a working piece of software. Scrum prescribes an inspect-and-adapt approach. So with each sprint, they adapt by incorporating lessons from previous sprints.

  Scrum has 3 roles - Product Owner, Scrum Master and the development team. They each have distinct roles to play. The Scrum process starts with the "backlog" —a list of requirements—where each requirement is broken down into user stories and their corresponding tasks. These user stories are prioritized in order to plan the next sprint. There are several reports in Scrum that help a team measure the performance of a sprint - velocity, burnup, burndown, cumulative flow diagram. Scrum also emphasizes in face-to-face communication and small feedback loops within the team which is why meetings play an important role in the Scrum process.

• Kanban

  Kanban is a method to visualize your workflow that lets you identify bottlenecks and increase productivity by limiting the amount of work in progress. It's based on the Japanese philosophy Kaizen, the idea that small continuous changes result in a substantial movement over time.

  A basic Kanban board typically has three columns - "To do", "In progress", and "Done." Each work item is written on a Kanban card which also holds details like the description of the work item and the assignee. The Kanban cards are placed in their respective columns on the board. Each column has a work-in-progress limit which prevents the team from becoming overburdened and lets them focus on delivering quality work.

  Kanban is a flow-based agile project management method which advocates continual delivery. Performance is usually measured by how long a work item takes to go from "To do" to "Done" on the board. This method focuses solely on preventing capacity overload and enabling quality and continuous delivery.

• Extreme project management (XPM)

  Extreme project management is an agile approach best suited for complex, fast-paced, and non-hierarchical projects with high uncertainty. It underscores constant adaptation and resilience to achieve desired outcomes. The XPM approach prioritizes flexibility, allowing frequent changes in timelines and strategies, and using trial-and-error to keep pace with evolving technologies and dynamic environments.

• Feature driven development (FDD)

  Feature-driven development, also known as FDD, is a methodology in the agile framework centered on providing timely updates and fully functional features to clients. Unlike Scrum, which is a delivery-focused approach, FDD is feature-driven, where fully functional features must be rolled out every 2–10 days, whereas a sprint cycle lasts for two weeks to a month. The feature-driven approach in agile project management values documentation and highly relies on it, while other methods conduct daily meetups as a source of communication for updates.

  The FDD approach was devised by IT strategist Jeff De Luca in 1997 to manage a project for a bank in Singapore, which turned out to be a huge success, leading to widespread adoption of the FDD model.

  This approach is designed around five crucial steps spanning the entire product lifecycle, focusing on large feature-specific projects:

  1. Develop an overall model
  2. Build a feature list
  3. Plan by feature
  4. Design by feature
  5. Build by feature

• Dynamic systems development method (DSDM)

  The dynamic systems development method is an agile approach introduced in 1994 as an improvement to project management, replacing the rapid application development (RAD) approach. DSDM adheres to strict timelines and budgets, supported by ranking requirements from the highest level of importance to the lowest.

  The DSDM approach includes the following five phases:

  1. Feasibility study
  2. Business study
  3. Functional model iteration
  4. Design and build
  5. Implementation

• Adaptive software development (ASD)

  This agile project management methodology emphasizes extensive and rapid adaptability and responsiveness to changing requirements and environments, evolving products with little planning, and continuous learning experiences. ASD focuses on the quality of outcomes rather than the tasks performed to achieve them.

  There are three phases in ASD reflecting unpredictability and continuous learning:

  1. Speculate
  2. Collaborate
  3. Learn

Kanban vs Scrum: When to pick one?

The "Kanban vs Scrum" is quite a popular debate within agile project management circles. While there are some key differences between the two, both are fundamentally based on agile principles like adapting to change, transparency and constant, consistent improvement.

Scrum is more prescriptive of the two with strict time boxes, ceremonies and artifacts. Kanban is favored by teams who deliver continuously and are working on optimizing their workflow. If you don't like either, there's a third option Scrumban, which combines the structure of Scrum and the flexibility of Kanban.

Each team operates differently. The framework you choose for your team depends on your work, your organizational culture and your team dynamic. That being said, the framework you choose will directly influence your team's productivity and job satisfaction. So choose wisely :)

How do you implement the agile methodology in project management?

Here are several steps to implement the agile methodology in project management successfully.

• Decide if agile is the right approach: Before implementing the agile methodology, it is crucial to determine if this approach is the right fit for your team and project. This decision can be based on multiple factors, such as the nature of the projects your team works on and the overall organizational culture.
• Select an agile framework: There is a plethora of agile frameworks and practices to choose from, serving different purposes and requirements. When selecting an appropriate agile project management framework, consider the character and size of your team and the project requirements to choose the approach that works best for your team.
• Plan your projects well: The next step towards an agile approach is to plan your projects meticulously. Planning is essential for clearly delineating the scope and objectives and preventing unexpected setbacks through setting up clear roadmaps and project backlogs.
• Measure success: Agile methodology emphasizes continuous improvement, so it is important to measure success to understand what went well and what did not to help teams perform better in upcoming projects. This can be achieved through regular retrospectives and sprint reviews.

What is agile management in software development?

Agile project development (also called agile software development) is a project management approach widely used in software development. This approach values flexibility, responsiveness, and continuous improvement from start to finish of the software development process through active collaboration and adaptation to dynamic requirements. Agile software development advocates delivering fully functional fragments of the software in increments rather than a single large release and incorporates regular iterations based on feedback.

Here are the steps every agile team follows to develop and deliver value to customers efficiently.

• Requirement gathering: In this phase, the scope and requirements are clearly defined, along with the time and effort needed to develop the software, to determine economic and technical feasibility.
• Planning: The next step is to create a proper roadmap to prioritize requirements and translate them into workable tasks. During the planning phase, the development team prioritizes work items and plans which features should be rolled out in what order.
• Development: Once planning is complete, the development team starts to build the software, aiming for fully functional features or fragments of the software with minimal errors. At this stage, the software undergoes multiple iterations based on a continuous feedback loop.
• Testing: In this phase, the developed software is thoroughly tested to identify and fix bugs and analyze performance, ensuring the quality of the software.
• Deployment: Once the software passes quality assurance, it is pushed into the live environment for customers to use.
• Maintenance: The software is monitored and maintained regularly to ensure it continues meeting customer expectations and needs.

How does an agile project management software help projects?

In today's competitive software development era, where quickly seizing the right opportunities and adapting to changing customer needs and market dynamics has become crucial for success, companies are shifting to agile project management methods. Every project team that aims to develop and deliver products in proper iterations and increments requires robust and efficient agile project management software to support and execute an agile project where design, development, and testing can happen simultaneously.

Agile project management software helps project teams by allowing them to:

• Create projects.
• Plan and prioritize project requirements.
• Execute sprints and track progress.
• Visualize progress and analyze performance, pitfalls, and potential risks.
• Support release plans for incremental delivery.
• Enable extensive communication with stakeholders and across teams to plan, execute, and deliver value to customers.

Hybrid project management: Blending traditional project management with agile

Agile is undoubtedly the booming trend in today's project management era. However, the advantages of traditional project management cannot be denied. When weighing both project management frameworks, they have their own pros and cons, making it difficult to choose one methodology over another. That's why hybrid project management is the ideal solution, where strategic planning from the classic method is combined with the flexibility and iterative nature of agile to manage and achieve projects triumphantly.

Learn more about hybrid project management and its benefits here.