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    Fundamentals of Agile Project Management: An Overview
    Fundamentals of Agile Project Management: An Overview
    Fundamentals of Agile Project Management: An Overview
    Ebook206 pages4 hours

    Fundamentals of Agile Project Management: An Overview

    By Marcus Gonclaves

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    About this ebook

    This is the seventh book in the Technical Manager's Survival Guides series.
    In this new volume, the authors introduce readers to agile methods for managing projects. Agile methods have been around for a while, but their prevalence has increased as the result of many successful projects in organizations that have applied them.

    While some of the agile methods discussed here spring from software development experiences, it is essential to understand that the underlying principles can be applied with appropriate modifications to any industry or organization.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmerican Society of Mechanical Engineers
    Release dateMar 22, 2011
    ISBN9780791861585
    Fundamentals of Agile Project Management: An Overview

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      Book preview

      Fundamentals of Agile Project Management - Marcus Gonclaves

      Chapter 1

      A Case for Agile

      The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter¹ .

      Changing Landscape of Project Management

      Project management (or PM) has been around for almost as long as projects have been around; in other words, since time immemorial. Of course, formalization of project management terminologies and techniques is not quite as dated and is also evolving as we speak. Project management has not achieved the same level of maturity and acceptance in all geographies and industries, neither is there one silver-bullet PM method that will work in all situations. The methods, principles and practices used to manage projects depend on various factors including the criticality, complexity, and length of the project, as well as team size and location, organizational culture, etc.

      There is no PM practice that is universal. Besides, even for the same domains, practices evolve with time and also in response to unsuccessful attempts in the past. The Project Management Institute estimates that the world spends nearly one-fifth of its GDP (US $12 trillion in 2008) on projects. Given the huge amounts of funds involved, it is essential to gain better understanding of PM methods and be able to apply them in the best possible manner.

      In this book, we make an attempt to introduce the readers to agile methods to managing projects. Agile methods have been around for a while now. However, they are gaining more and more acceptance as a result of the success trail that they leave behind in organizations that apply them, and also as organizations that have been burned by unsuccessful projects look for alternatives so that

      1. T.E. Hulme, The Philosophy of Intensive Manifolds, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art, 1924

      history does not repeat itself. Indeed, the yet to be released Standish Group report on software development chaos gives credit to agile methods for the stellar improvement in software development projects in the last decade. The new report states that 35% of software projects started in 2006 can be categorized as successful; a marked improvement from the groundbreaking report in 1994, which categorized only 16.2% projects as successful.

      As per the Chairman of the Standish Group, Jim Johnson, the three primary reasons for the improvement in software quality are better project management, iterative development and the emerging Web infrastructure. While some of the agile methods discussed here spring from software development experiences, it is essential to understand that the underlying principles can be applied with appropriate modifications to any industry and organization.

      Why Projects Fail

      Imagine a war situation a few decades back when communication tools were not very advanced. A company of soldiers is sent out by the captain for a specific mission with a specific set of commands. The soldiers are expected to exactly follow the commands and have no discretionary powers whatsoever. They set out for the mission. While on field, the situation changes significantly, or the enemy acts in certain unforeseen ways. However, the soldiers have no facilities for two-way communication with the captain and are not sure if they should really bend the commands to deal with the situation in hand.

      What do you think will be the outcome of the above mission? The company of soldiers will possibly see the mission through or might get hurt in the process. However, they might be completely disillusioned (or even worse) because they know the original commands are not helpful anymore, and they will certainly lack a sense of ownership for the mission. The mission might be abandoned well before its completion. Even if it does get completed, it might not have relevance any more. The captain might have to answer some very uncomfortable questions from higher-ranked officials.

      The mission in the above example can be compared to a project handled by executives (captains) in various organizations and executed by project teams (company of soldiers). The example shows what traditional project management methods can do to a project in a changing business environment. With traditional methods, we could end up with a customer who invests in a project that serves no purpose, a project team that just works to complete the project and has no concern for the usefulness of the final product, and a final product that may very well be obsolete, or of such poor quality that it is effectively useless at the end of the project.

      This leads us to the question - why is it that so many projects in the best companies handled by the best PMs fail, despite in-depth planning and documentation, very highly skilled project team and tons of dollars spent on them? This is a serious area of concern, particularly for software development projects. It is a known fact in IT circles that software projects are prone to greatly exceeding budget and schedule.

      Some of the key reasons for project failure are:

      A fatal condition called analysis paralysis;

      Lack of stakeholder commitment and ownership;

      The project manager works on what he thinks the client wants rather than what he knows the client needs;

      Lack of collaboration and communication;

      Emphasis on documentation rather than working results;

      Companies focus on ‘plan the work and work the plan’ and leave no window of opportunity to get intermediate feedback from the stakeholders and incorporate it into the work;

      Insufficient focus on the business value that the project should produce.

      The above list is in no way comprehensive but it does give us enough justification to look for solutions that increase the chances for successful project execution. In the current economy, where organizations are under immense pressure to turn out reliable projects on time and under budget, even as project budgets are being slashed across the board, organizations find themselves looking for better tools and PM methods to survive and thrive.

      Case Example: Evolution of Software Development Methodologies

      Figure 1.1 shows the evolution of software development methodologies in the last few decades. Since most of the agile methods have their roots and are applied to software development, we are tracing the history of software development methodologies. This evolution is not very sacrosanct.

      You will find examples of many overlaps and methodologies used much before the decade in which they are presented in the figure. The figure is just to give the reader an idea of which methodology gained prominence and got formalized in which decade. The figure does show that we have a come a long way from the linear life cycle or waterfall thinking of the 60’s, that required dotting every i and crossing every t of the project plan before moving on to execution.

      Figure 1.1 – Methodology trends through the years

      Is Work the Plan and Plan the Work Obsolete?

      Not so long ago, it was widely accepted that planning is a very critical part of the entire project. While proper planning is still very important and will result in better execution, the timeframe for the project plan is shrinking. In the current environment, it is very difficult to plan for the entire project life cycle at the start of the project. There is a need to make frequent visits to the drawing board. It is quite possible that the project scope may change entirely during the various iterations of project planning; however, this project may still be classified as successful, while the project that delivers what was planned for but became obsolete during project execution may be classified as redundant or a failure.

      In today’s environment, it may not be wrong to say that all products and services are perishable. If the time to market is too long, the product or service may be rendered useless even if it has not physically perished. In the same way, a project can very easily perish if by the time it is completed, the stakeholder demands have changed. Companies have begun to realize that people and not processes are the real lubricants for any project and hence stakeholder commitment and involvement is very necessary for the success of projects. In order for the stakeholders to be committed to the project, they must be able to see its usefulness in their current environment and lives.

      As a result, in the current dynamic and uncertain world, traditional project management methods are getting less and less effective and this calls for methods that are lot more dynamic, adaptive, flexible…. in other words, agile.

      Assembling a Jigsaw Puzzle

      Agile, in simple terms can be defined as an iterative and incremental approach to managing projects, with every iteration delivering a complete, working subset of the final product.

      Agile projects can be compared to assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Every piece is an increment that brings us closer to putting together the whole picture. Let us take a moment to think about how we solve a puzzle. It consists of a sequence of

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