Agile Project Management: The Key to Accelerating Business Value

May

The growing influence of agile

In The 11th annual State of Agile Report released by VersioOne, the key findings reflect the growing influence of Agile. The extract of the report is reproduced below.

• Agile adoption is still growing – While 94% of respondents said their organizations practiced agile, they also stated that more than half (60%) of their organizations’ teams are not yet practicing agile. 80% of respondents also said their organization was at or below a “still maturing” level with agile.

• Measuring enterprise agility with business value – Measuring how much business value an organization is delivering is an increasing focus. In this year’s survey, the business value was cited as the second most popular measure (46%) of an agile initiative’s success, rising from fourth in the prior year.

Source: www.stateofagile.com.

Organizations across the globe are focusing more disruptive technologies. This doesn’t displace traditional management practices but evolution will make way for improvements that can be iterative and incremental. As the number of projects increase, the need for Project Managers who can balance the traditional touch with the existing and emerging practices are growing in demand. The Agile Practice Guide released along with the PMBOK version 6 acts as the reference material for managers pursuing PMP certification as well those who wish to certify as Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).The stress on Agile is evident. The Agile Guide dwells on integrating Agile practices within the traditional project management framework.The future seems to steer towards agile.

So, what value does an Agile Project Management bring to the table? We will look into few pointers that substantiate the increasing need for Agile project Management practitioners underscoring the fact the Agile movement is gaining momentum.

1. Agile Project Management helps to structure the thoughts/ideas into MVP (Minimum Viable Product) which is clear mandate in this competitive era.

2. Agile Project Management brings flexibility in terms of scope and timeline which was always a pain point in the past. There is no need to verify and validate at the end of the phase, instead work is always small chunk upon which development builds. Hence managing scope and mitigating risks are appreciable in terms of control and management.

3. Communication becomes more simple and transparent with Agile Project Management as the customer is involved frequently, and change can be communicated and approval sought, thus the long-winded approach of approval for change request gets replaced with the customer approving or disapproving in the earlier stage of conception or even during development. The daily stand-up meeting clearly states the goal for that day

And delay or milestones missed can be factored and adjusted with minimal impact on the schedule.

4. The Team motivation is better as we have short-term goals and the pace of progress is closely studied and maintained.

5. Agile Project Management serves to customer engagement and experience by stating the timeline of delivery averting the last minute surprise or shock. The chances for disappointment are slim as the Customer is very much involved and becomes part of the development and know exactly the status of the project at any given point in time, and don’t have wait till the deadline to know the fate of the project’ completion.

This article is a precursor to Agile Project Management. We will discuss more it in our subsequent posting. So watch out for this space.

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