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Agile Project Management

A brief history of Agile

Waterfall is a popular project management methodology that refers to the sequential or linear ordering of phases.

The term "agile" refers to being able to move quickly and easily. It also refers to flexibility and the willingness and ability to change and adapt.

So the term "agile" means flexibility, repetition, and openness to change.

Agile project management is an approach to project and team management based on the Agile Manifesto.

The manifesto is a collection of four values and 12 principles that define the mindset that all Agile teams should strive for.

Distinguishing Agile from Waterfall

Three important aspects of a project are:

• Requirements — Requirements are conditions that must be met or tasks that must be finished to ensure the successful completion of the project;
• Documentation;
• Deliverables — A deliverable is a tangible outcome from a project.

The four values of the Agile Manifesto

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work, we have come to value:

• individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
• working software over comprehensive documentation;
• customer collaboration over contract negotiation;
• responding to change over following a plan.

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile values and principles inform the why, how, and what of Agile project management planning and processes.

The 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto

The four themes of the Agile principles are:

• Value delivery, or how do Agile teams deliver highly valuable products to their customers?
• Business collaboration, or how do Agile teams collaborate with their business partners and stakeholders to create business value to the organization and their users?
• Team culture, or how does a team create and maintain the right interpersonal and team dynamics to deliver value for the customers and the business?
• Retrospectives, or how does the project learn to continuously increase performance of an organization and business?

Value delivery

Value delivery is about delivering the work as quickly as possible in order get feedback and mitigate the risk.

Simplicity allows a team to focus and work on the things that matter the most.

Business collaboration

Business collaboration is term to refer to those involved with things like sales, marketing, customer support, and account management.

Collaborating with your customers helps the team get critical business information immediately by allowing them to adjust and adapt to any new information instantly.

You can achieve collaboration by making sure that business people work near the development team, ideally in the same office or virtual space.

The goal is to enable easy access between business people and developers.

Team Dynamics and Culture

Make sure your team:

• Is motivated to do the right thing;
• Feels trusted to do the right thing;
• Has the resources and space to work closely together on their goals;
• Works at a sustainable pace.

Teams work best when they feel like their input is valued, so you, as the project manager, should make space for your team to engage and actively contribute to the team culture.

Retrospectives and continuous learning

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Strive to continuously learn and adapt to what's working and what's not working for them.

Questions for improvement:

• How is the team doing?
• Are the customers happy?
• Are there processes we could optimize?
• Are our tools working for us?
• Are we following the values?
• Are we accumulating any debt?

Adopting an Agile mindset: The Agile Manifesto

Four statements of the Agile Manifesto