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Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management

– Principles of practice

Uses iterations (“time boxes”) to develop a workable product that satisfies

the customer and other key stakeholders.

Stakeholders and customers review progress and re-evaluate priorities to

ensure alignment with customer needs and company goals.

Adjustments are made and a different iterative cycle begins that

subsumes the work of the previous iterations and adds new capabilities to

the evolving product.

Continuous integration, verification, and validation of the evolving product.

Frequent demonstration of progress to increase the likelihood that the

end product will satisfy customer needs.

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Agile PM Principles

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Empirical project challenges

The client Doesn’t know what they want

The client think they know what they want but are wrong

We don’t understand what the client want

We think we understand but we are wrong

We don’t know how to do it

We think we know but we are wrong

Changes on external factors alter the objectives

The client has learned along the way that now they want

something different

We have learned along the way that we can offer something

different

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“Agile project management” methodology named OOSP

(Object Oriented Software Process)

The whole project management process is divided into the

four main phases very similarly as in the other project

management approaches.

The main four phases are

– Initial Phase

– Construction Phase

– Deliver Phase

– Support Phase

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Initial Phase

The Initial Phase includes four main stages:

– justification (assessment, feasibility study),

– Definition and validation of requirements

– definition of initial documents

– definition of project infrastructure.

Input

– includes artefacts and information from previous finished projects

together with suggestions of changes and reports of defects

Output

– entire managerial and planning documentation necessary for

successful completion of all three subsequent phases

Goal

– to lay the ground for successful project 7

Construct Phase

The Construct Phase includes four main stages:

– modelling (analyzing, designing),

– testing in the small,

– generalizing (reusing)

– producing (manufacturing) product or prototype.

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Deliver Phase

The Deliver Phase includes four main stages:

– releasing (assembling),

– testing in the large,

– Reworking (repairing)

– assessing

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Support Phase

The Support Phase includes three main stages:

– supporting and identifying of defects

– Enhancements (change management)

– outage concerned with operation termination and product disposal.

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Advantages

– Completely developed and tested features in short iterations

– Simplicity of the process

– Clearly defined rules

– Increasing productivity

– Self-organizing

– each team member carries a lot of responsibility

– Improved communication

– Combination with Extreme Programming

Drawbacks

– “Undisciplined hacking” (no

written documentation)

– Violation of responsibility

– Current mainly carried by the

inventors

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Key Practices: Agile PM

How You View agile teams

– Recognize the difference between formal and informal team

structures and structure agile teams accordingly

– Mold groups of individuals into high-performance agile teams

– Integrate these teams into the larger agile enterprise

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Encourage Diversified Roles

Define roles holistically so that team members can develop into

Generalizing Specialists (or Versatilists):

“Generalizing Specialist”

– Someone with one or more specialties who actively seeks to gain new skills

in existing specialties, as well as in other areas

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Guiding Vision

Objective:

– Create a shared vision or mental model for driving behavior on agile

projects. The Guiding Vision is an aggregate of three component

visions: team vision, project vision and product vision

Key Implications:– Evolve team vision to drive team behavior

– Create project vision to drive project behavior

– Facilitate product vision to drive project evolution

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Simple Rules

Objective:– Implement a set of simple, adaptable methodology rules that allow

agile teams to deliver business value rapidly and reliably

Key Implications:– Assess the environment to determine its characteristics

– Identify and implementing a simple set of methodology rules that is congruent with the environment

– Hone the discipline needed for continuous and consistent application of the simple rules

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How-To Rules: Key features of the process

– Feasibility, Project Discovery

– Release and Iteration Planning

– Product and Iteration Backlogs

– Tracking via Burn-down charts

– Team collocated in team rooms

– Core team dedicated to project

Boundary Rules: To define allowable action

– Estimation done only by performers

– Prioritization done only by product owners

Priority Rules: To rank work opportunities

– Priorities always decided in Sprint Planning Meetings

Timing Rules: To define and synchronize delivery pace

– 3-Week Sprints

Exit Rules: To minimize sunk costs

– Sprint Reset allowable in extreme circumstances

Open Information

Objective: – Create an open flow and exchange of information among project

team members, and among other associated external groups

Key Implications:– Reorganize team facilities and seating to institute agile information

sharing practices

– Analyze the time taken to exchange information with external groups

to identify and reduce the information cycle time

– Structure conversations on the project team so as to generate

transforming exchanges of information among project team

members

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Encourage Information Radiators

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Light Touch

Objective: – Manage agile teams with a style that allows team autonomy and

flexibility, and a customer value focus without sacrificing control

Key Implications:– Establish decentralized control that defers decision making for

frequently occurring, less critical events to the team

– Manage the flow of customer value from one creative stage to another

– Recognize team members as whole-persons and treat them accordingly

– Focus on strengths, rather than weaknesses to leverage people’s uniqueness.

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Build on Personal Strengths

Applying it to Others:– Each person is unique and has unique strengths and weaknesses –

whole persons

– Great managers recognize that trying to standardize human behavior is futile, and don’t waste their time trying to change people dramatically

– Rather than focus on weaknesses, they build on the personal strengths of their team members and help them become more of “who they already are”

Applying it to Yourself:– Find out what you don’t like doing and stop doing it

– "The point is to feel authentic, self-assured or creative”

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Adaptive Leadership

Objectives: – Track and monitor the project for timely and relevant feedback

– Institute systemic procedures for learning and adaptation

– Help the Agile Manager maintain a leadership presence that animates the team

Key Implications:– Track and monitor APM practices to ensure their proper application and

desired outcomes

– Learn and adapt continuously according to the feedback obtained

– Embody leadership that inspires and energizes the team

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Be aware to the challenges

It does not satisfy top management’s need for budget, scope,

and schedule control.

Its principles of self-organization and close collaboration can

be incompatible with corporate cultures.

Its methods appear to work best on small projects that

require only five-nine dedicated team members to complete

the work.

It requires active customer involvement and cooperation.

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Tools

Ace project

JIRA Agile

Agilealliance

Reading

– Somerville Software engineering 9th edition chapter 3

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