¶Agile PM¶

Is Agile (APM) really effective in the real world?  Does it beat waterfall hands down? Or is there a methodology better suited for your team? These are just a few common questions in an ever changing world.

SCRUM Burndown Chart

The need for Agile Development came from a fast moving culture during the dot com era (mid 1990’s- 2000), although APM truly did not take hold until after the dot com bust.  The need arose from an adaptive business environment brought on during the dot com generation. Companies and businesses were receiving millions in startup capital to quickly bring products to market and become the next greatest American innovation/product.  Get the picture?  With the rapidly spreading internet, the pressure to perform was on. This dynamic also forced clients to work more closely with their teams.  Not so before the web. This was a quick fight with millions of dollars, and stakeholders more actively involving themselves in the creative process, which ultimately gave birth to the agile method.

The upshot: Agile made us faster.

Agile methodology, in its simplest form, is a creative process with direct communication between the client, customer and team for fast-paced collaboration and delivery. This means face to face meetings, or at the very least, video conferences, instead of white papers, cold e-mails and a laundry lists of requirements. Agile methodology uses storyboards, whiteboards and color cards to help visualize progress. This injects more creativity into the collaborative process. Project teams must still perform some basic up-front planning, but not nearly the same in-depth requirements needed for the more traditional PM style of the last half century. Once the initial requirements are identified, agile methodology begins to take shape.

In Agile, there are three repeated steps (cycles).

1.      Iteration – Basic planning to design outline of work and estimates.

2.      Review – Client and team discuss issues/ lessons learned.

3.      Testing – Development of actual software for Client/team testing (Some PM’s combine #2 and #3 into a single process).

These cycles are repeated over and over until a product is delivered. The agile method allows extreme flexibility for evolution. The Agile Project Management cycle is a very adaptive and fluid approach. 

Agile is not the best choice for some clients. For example, a construction job requires a more traditional management approach. Construction jobs have a clearly defined set of rigid tasks that are usually performed in sequence, and often repeated without deviation for each job. Having a fluid repeating collaborative cycle with most construction jobs would create chaos.  That is why some PM’s are combining a hybrid approach to managing work, taking the best of a variety of methods.  For instance, whether you are using an agile method or not, video conferencing along with the explosion of web meeting tools make face to face meetings easier and cheaper than ever.  That type of communication provides a level of fidelity that email or conference calls alone do not.  

Although styles evolve and adapt over time, one constant remains…the need for a solid project management tool like this.

Consider the combo: Agile and Standard Time.

This combo allows for creation of traditional structure and implementation, along with more flexible features.  In other words, you can do either or both.  One such feature found in the web edition is a collaborative message board within tasks/stories.  The product also has an optional client log-in to keep them informed of real-time progress.  There are also email reminders that tell a story.  Is a deliverable overdue or over budget? Is a task about to begin, or is the story complete?  Email notifications will let you know.  From a more visual perspective, the task view allows users to see color coded story updates in a dashboard format.  The program also has a SCRUM burn down chart.

This product has grown organically over the last decade to meet the demands of thousands of discriminating managers. In fact, we used the agile method to create the integration to Deltek Premier for cost accounting when working with government contracting.  You get time tested project management along with cutting-edge features to meet the needs of the most aggressive managers.  This is not a legacy tool and as styles change, we will continue to meet the demands of traditional management.  To download a free trial click here now.