Agile Project Management is a term you will hear associated with software development projects. It is popular because it helps the project managers to balance discipline to every phase of the project without compromising on the creativity and innovative aspect of the process. It isn’t rigid so you can easily handle changes during the projects. Because of this, the agile methodology is being introduced in non-development teams such as marketing and sales.
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What is Agile Project Management?
The agile method uses an iterative approach as opposed to the classic waterfall approach that follows all or nothing. Agile management allows you to have a step-by-step approach for software (or final product) delivery. The projects under agile methodology get divided into distinct pieces of user functionality and are delivered in iterations, instead of sending the complete project. This helps the client give feedback during the development, and makes it easier for the team to make changes.
Agile methodology helps to streamline projects, improve team collaboration, speed up project deliverables, and helps get timely results. Making a plan for the complete project leaves no room for changes and improvements. In the real world, changes are a common occurrence. Sometimes the client changes their mind about something, or you find a better way to do something. So, if you are working in iterations, you have the flexibility to include the changes while having a plan to follow.
Agile project management gives teams the flexibility to have plans on a strategical as well as tactical level. This makes for efficient planning. The overall project can be strategized without having to micro-manage the details. Then, based on strategic planning, tactical planning can be brought into action for getting the deliverables reading for each iteration.
Scrum Meetings
Let’s begin with the concept of agile vs. scrum. While the agile methodology is a set of guiding principles to approach for an iterative approach towards the completion of your projects, scrum is a specific set of rules to be followed to achieve the agile methodology.
Scrum meetings are a really efficient way to keep track of everything going on and having knowledge of where each part of the project stands. Because you are working in sprints to complete each iteration, unlike working on a project as a whole, it gives you frequent deadlines. It helps keep everyone pushing to achieve targets.
Scrum meetings are quick. The team updates the progress of their last sprint of tasks. Then the team regroups for the next sprint. This helps the team to deal with the backlog if any, and also plan the tasks – increasing the efficiency overall.
The Cons of Adopting Agile Methodology
I have talked about the benefits of the methodology throughout the article. But, adopting technology has its own set of issues. When project managers make the switch to this methodology from whatever they were doing earlier, they often try to adopt every aspect of it all at once.
Making changes in phases is important for any big change so that you can measure productivity and decide if the switch should be made or not.
Adopting the methodology just because you have heard good things is not a sound reason. When you make the switch, you still have to do risk analysis and quality control along with creating critical path schedules. Any big change should be brought about in iterations to choose what aspects are appropriate for your team and what needs to be tweaked from the management system.
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