Agile project management is the revolutionary method introduced for the practice of project management. This is one of the new project management strategies that is applied to the project management practice in software development. Therefore it is always best to relate agile project management to the software development process.
There are a number of processes following the waterfall model. With the advancement of software development, technologies and business requirements, the traditional models are not convenient to cater for the demands. So there are flexible software development models which are required so as to deal with the agility of the wants. So the information technology community developed the software development models. Agile is an umbrella term that is used for identifying various models used for agile development, such as scrum. The agile development model is different from other conventional models. Agile project management may be a specialized area in project management.
The Agile Process
We have many differences between agile development models when compared to the traditional models. It is important to have a good understanding of agile development process models in order to know agile project management.
- The Agile model focuses on the fact that the whole team should be a tightly integrated unit. The Agile team has the developers, software tester, project manager and the customer.
- Often communication is one of the significant factors which make this integration possible. Daily meetings are conducted to track work on a daily basis and dependencies.
- Deliveries are short – The delivery cycle ranges from one week to four weeks. These are called sprints.
- The agile project team has open communication techniques and tools which enable the team members to express their views and feedback openly and quickly. We have these comments which are considered when building the requirements and implementation of the software.
Scope of Agile Project management
In the agile project, the whole team is responsible for managing the team and it is not just the project manager’s responsibility. Common sense is used over the written policies to execute the processes and procedures.
This ensures that there will be no delay in management decision making and therefore things can progress quicker. The agile project management function will demonstrate leadership and skills in motivating others. All members of the team are proactive and disciplined.
What are the responsibilities of an Agile Project Manager?
From one project to another these responsibilities may slightly change.
The roles of an agile project management function are:
- He is responsible for maintaining the agile values and practices in the project team.
- The agile project manager clarifies the impediments as the core function of the role.
- He helps the project team members to turn the requirements backlog into working software functionality.
- He facilitates and encourages effective and open communication within the team.
- He is responsible for holding agile meetings that discuss the short-term plans and face the obstacles.
- He also enhances the tools and practices used in the development process.
- The agile project manager is the chief motivator of the team and plays the mentor for the team members.
Agile Project Management does not
- Maintain the software development team.
- It overrules the informed decisions taken by the team members.
- It has direct team members to perform tasks or routines.
- It drives the team to achieve specific milestones.
- It assigns tasks to the team members.
- It makes decisions on behalf of the team. Includes in technical decision making or deriving the product strategy.
Questions
- What is Agile Project management?
- Explain the roles and responsibilities of Agile Project Management?
