Agile Project Management: What Are Executives Trying to Solve?
Agile Project Management follows an iterative strategy for successful projects. Customer requirements and continuous interactions are conducted to ensure that the entire agile project management process progressively adapts to the business requirements without diluting the overall project requirements. The entire project is completed in small segments followed by relevant stakeholder reviews and feedback. This helps to make the right changes at the right time to avoid project failures.
The Agile Principles
The top brass from organizations all over the world are increasingly patronizing agile way of life for project management. The twelve agile project management principles laid out in the Agile Manifesto is a strong indication of the level of focus, quality and precision which any client would love to receive.
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential.
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Why do the top executives prefer agile methods?
Managing quality within the cost, time and scope constraints has been a big challenge for successful projects. Often poor quality is a major escalation point which the top management faces on critical projects. As per the agile project management principles, ‘Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility’ thereby sharpening the quality focus that ever before. This in turn helps to reduce the manpower on bug fixing and maintenance. In short, agile enables a sound equilibrium amidst reducing wastefulness, saving dollars and maintaining the expected quality level.
It is a well known fact that there is no prescribed ‘best way’ to manage a project. Agile presents a unique opportunity to move towards the perfect path by trial and error methods, with the support from stakeholders. The adaptability propounded by the agile methodology is an extremely strong neutralizer to the disorganization faced by many project teams.
The Agile project management method promotes more collaboration and work distribution among the team and thereby reducing the dependence and pressure on the project manager. This enhances accountability and better prioritization leading to longer benefits. The agile approach of thinking also unmasks the real issues to the top management, enabling them to take the right actions.
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