What is Agile Project Management (APM)?

Agile Project Management (APM) is an iterative project management methodology that prioritizes adaptability, teamwork, and client focus. Agile, which started in the field of software development, has expanded to include many different businesses and project kinds.

This article discusses Agile Project Management (APM), its phases, advantages and disadvantages.

Agile Project Management (APM)

Agile Project Management (APM) emphasizes collaboration, customer feedback, and rapid delivery of functional components, allowing teams to respond quickly to changes and evolving requirements. It enables the team members to work collaboratively with each other and with the customer. It motivates team members to faster development of the project. It works by breaking the processes into smaller chunks known as sprints. It entertains customers' feedback, which helps the development team to the changes in the sprint.

History of Agile Project Management

Agile project management started when people realized old ways of doing things weren't working well for fast changing projects, especially in software. It got a big boost in 2001 with the Agile Manifesto, which focused on teamwork, adaptability, and making customers happy. Agile methods like Scrum and Kanban break projects into smaller parts, making them easier to manage and change. It's not just for software anymore, other industries use Agile too. Different types of Agile, like SAFe and LeSS(Large-Scale Scrum), help big companies work in more flexible ways. Agile is all about getting better over time, always looking for ways to improve how teams work together. Overall, it's a modern way of managing projects that's all about teamwork and being flexible.

Why do we need Agile Project Management?

We need Agile Project Management because traditional project management methodologies often struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of modern business environments. Agile offers several benefits:

• Flexibility: Agile allows teams to respond quickly to changing requirements and priorities, enabling them to deliver value more effectively in dynamic environments.
• Customer Satisfaction: Agile focuses on frequent customer collaboration and delivering working solutions in short cycles, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and better alignment with customer needs.
• Efficiency: Agile promotes iterative development and continuous improvement, leading to more efficient processes, reduced waste, and faster time-to-market for products and services.
• Transparency: Agile encourages transparency and open communication within teams and with stakeholders, promoting trust and accountability.
• Adaptability: Agile enables teams to learn from their experiences and adapt their approach accordingly, improving project outcomes and reducing the risk of failure.

Traditional Project Management Vs Agile Project Management

Here's a comparison of Traditional Project Management and Agile Project Management:

How Agile Project Management (APM) Works?

Agile Project Management is literally the iterative and incremental approach to project management, especially in software development. It focuses on flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. Here’s how it works:

• Iterative Development: The large project is split into smaller units called iterations or sprints. The average time for such an iteration is 1 to 4 weeks, and after the completion of an iteration, you have a potentially shippable product increment.
• Collaboration: APM encourages teamwork and collaboration among teams of developers, designers, and other stakeholders. The team normally has constant communication about the change so that everyone will be moving in the same direction when the change is implemented.
• Customer Feedback: Customers' frequent feedbacks are also included in the development process. This enables teams to change their priorities and improve the product according to actual user needs.
• Continuous Improvement: After each iteration, the teams conduct retrospectives to highlight what went well and what could be done better. This promotes a culture of learning and adaptation.

When to Use Agile Project Management?

Agile Project management is not suitable for every project.

• It is best suited when a customer isn't very clear about the project and the exact project description is not known.
• It is also best suitable for the project in which continuous feedback is entertained.
• This method will not work for very small projects and inexperienced team members.

Phases of Agile Project Management

1. Envision

It is the first phase of agile project management which involves the goal and purpose of the project. It also creates a list that prioritizes the features and requirements.

2. Speculate

It involves breaking the process into smaller chunks known as sprint and detailed planning is done to how to achieve the goal. In this phase, user stories are selected from the product backlog.

3. Explore

In this phase, the product is divided into sprints which lasts for 1-4 weeks. Progress, challenges, and plans are discussed in daily scrum meetings, and execution of the project is done.

4. Adapt

It involves continuous adaptation of the plan based on the feedback provided by the client. Scrum master continues to monitor the progress of the project and also address the problems faced by the developers. It demonstrates what has happened and what needs to be done.

5. Close

It is the last phase of agile product management which deploys the final product or new version of the product into the real world. It collects feedback from customers for future improvement of the project.

Pillars of APM(Agile Project Management)

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools: It emphasizes that agile is a people-centered approach to project development. It encourages the team to do effective communication among themselves. Teamm should be valued for their work. Processes and tools should be within the team and human power.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation: The agile manifesto is designed in such a way that it reduces the time wasted on documentation work and paperwork. Instead of wasting time on documentation, the agile team makes user stories including all the details regarding the project. They start developing the product and make changes according to the feedback given by the client.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation: Contract negotiation means customer desires/demands are noted on a legal contract before the development of the project and if the outcome is not as per the desire of the customer contract negotiation takes place. Agile believes in customer satisfaction over contract so it collaborates with customers throughout the development of the project to get regular feedback and make changes accordingly.
• Adapting to change above following a rigid plan: Agile is flexible and not rigid like the waterfall model which does not welcome changes after the development of the project. Agile allows changes according to the feedback provided by the customer.

Common Agile Methodologies

Here are some of the common Agile methodologies:

1. Scrum

Scrum is a type of Agile framework. It is a framework within which people can address complex adaptive problems while the productivity and creativity of delivering products are at the highest possible value. Scrum uses an Iterative process.

Silent features of Scrum are:

• Scrum is a light-weighted framework.
• Scrum emphasizes self-organization.
• Scrum is simple to understand.
• The Scrum framework helps the team to work together.

2. Kanban

Kanban is a popular Agile Software Development Methodology. It is a signaling device that instructs the moving of parts in a ‘pull’ production system, developed as part of the TPS (Toyota Production System). Kanban is about envisioning the existing workflow in terms of steps. These steps can be created on the whiteboard. The main aim of Kanban is to reduce WIP (Work-In-Progress), or inventory, between processes by ensuring the upstream process creates parts as long as its downstream process needs it.

3. Lean

Lean Software Development (LSD) is an agile framework that is used to streamline & optimize the software development process. It may also be referred to as the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) strategy as these ways of thinking are very much alike since both intend to speed up development by focusing on new deliverables.

Benefits of Agile Project Management (APM)

• Rapid development of projects: APM helps in the development of projects faster as it does not waste much time on documentation. All the team members collaborate and with the client for feedback.
• Freedom of ideas: The agile methodology gives freedom of ideas which encourages team members to come up with different ideas/ suggestions.
• Flexible and adaptable to the changes: It is not a rigid method like the waterfall model which does not allow changes. It welcomes customers' feedback and makes necessary changes.
• Entertains customer feedback: The agile model collaborates with customers to take their feedback and make changes.
• Faster issue or defect detection: Fault detection becomes faster with the help of the agile model of software development.
• Continuous involvement of customers: Customer and team collaborate throughout the development of the project.
• Efficient use of resources: The agile method efficiently uses the resources for development. It also takes off unnecessary waste of resources so that over development cost is reduced.

Limitations of Agile Project Management (APM)

• Unavailability of customers: It includes continuous customer involvement, but unavailability of customers can be challenging for the team to develop the project.
• Expertise: It needs good knowledge and experience.
• Resources: Unavailability of required resources may hamper the development.
• Documentation: It needs proper documentation. It creates user stories that include all the requirements of the user.
• Poor resource planning: It is difficult to predict the cost and time of the project because it is fully dependent on the customer feedback and changes required in the project so the team does not know what will be the end product.

Conclusion

Agile Project Management focuses on being flexible and working together as a team to get things done quickly. It encourages regular feedback from customers and allows teams to adapt to changes, helping to improve the quality of the final product and keep everyone happy.