Agile Project Management

Liverpool Business School

Agile Project Management

CONTENTS 1.

INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................3

2.

AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT............................................................................3 2.1.

OVERVIEW OF TRADITIONAL VS. AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT..4

2.2.

AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK........................................5

2.2.1.

Guiding Vision...................................................................................................5

2.2.2.

Organic (small and dynamic) teams................................................................6

2.2.3.

Light touch management style.........................................................................6

2.2.4.

Simple Rules.......................................................................................................6

2.2.5.

Free and open information...............................................................................6

2.2.6.

Adaptive leadership...........................................................................................7

3.

BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT..........7

4.

AGILE CONTROL IN APPLICATION LEVEL.........................................................8

5.

CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................8

6.

REFERENCE...................................................................................................................9

7.

APPENDIX.....................................................................................................................11

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Agile Project Management

1. INTRODUCTION A project is defined as a “unique set of co-ordinated activities, with definite starting and finishing points, undertaken by an individual or an organisation to meet specific objectives within defined time, cost and quality objectives” (APM, 2000). A project consist of different tasks such as setting objectives, establishing plans, organising resources, staffing, controlling, issuing directives, motivating and so on. Most projects are unique and one of a kind activities and thus makes it challenging to have a standard forward planning. Kerzner (2003) defines project management as the “process of achieving project objectives through the traditional organisational structure and over the specialities of the individual concerned”. It is characterised by methods of streamlining management and adapting particular management techniques, with the purpose of obtaining improved control and use of existing resources (ibid). It is valid to any unique project working towards a specific end objective. A traditional approach to project management is shown in Appendix 1. The project management environment is extremely turbulent, and is composed of numerous meetings, report writing, conflict resolution, continuous planning and re-planning, communications with customers and crisis management (Kerzner, 2003). The traditional structure of project management is under constant pressure because of the rapid rate of change in both technology and in market place. A highly bureaucratic structure and slow response rate to the rapidly changing environment calls for improved and innovative methods in project management. Lean and Agile project management are the results of these immense pressures on the conventional project management. Lean management is a response to competitive pressures with limited sources while agile management is a response to complexity brought about by constant change (Sanchez, 2001).

2. AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT Agile Project Management (APM) is derived with the modern business perspectives and it considers speed and dexterity as the key pillars for embracing continuous change in an effective and efficient way (van Assen, 2000). According to Spearman & Hopp (1996), agility could be viewed as the ability to reconfiguring a management system swiftly so as to have a proficient adaption of new products as they are introduced. APM provides mechanisms to transform quickly to changing markets, to produce high quality products and services and to offer superior customer service, in the most appropriate way. This shows the significance of workforce in APM and in other words, agile management is principally dependent on the capabilities and competencies of its people, to learn and evolve with change (Spearman, 1996). In this perspective, a company can attain competitive advantage 2|Page

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Agile Project Management

by focusing on its inimitable and valuable human resource; and thriving on the competencies, capabilities, knowledge, culture and skills (Barney, 1991). Agile project management principles and practises are driven by the theory of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). By implementing CAS principles, APM will be able to correct traditional project management assumptions and practises about change, control, order, organisations, people and overall problem solving approach (Elliot, 2008). Some of the recent APM methodologies are eXtreme Programming (XP), SCRUM, Crystal, and Adaptive Software Development and these all are concentrating on rapid interactive delivery, flexibility and working code.

2.1. OVERVIEW OF TRADITIONAL VS. AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Traditional project management is carried out in a very disciplined, planned and controlled manner (Hass, 2007). With this approach distinct project life cycle segments are easily recognisable and there will be a logical sequence for carrying out tasks. A significant part of the project should be well planned in advance so as to complete the tasks in an orderly sequence. Thus, the traditional techniques advise to follow a developmental path that moves in an orderly fashion, from laying foundations through implementing middle layers and finally on to feature integration (Karlesky, 2008). A waterfall project life cycle as illustrated in Appendix 2 can be regarded as a traditional project management approach. A phase is not revisited once it is completed. Traditional project management assumes that the events affecting the project are predictable and that tools and activities are well understood. The limitations of adopting this method are that projects seldom follow the sequential flow, and clients usually find it difficult to completely state all requirements early in the project (Hass, 2007). Agility refers to reacting quickly and delicately to changing markets and customer needs to produce high quality products and reduce lead time (Stalk, 1988). According to Richards (1996), agility is a factor which enables enterprises to thrive in an environment of continuous and unanticipated change. In Agile Project Management, developers and project stakeholders work collectively to understand the domain, identify what needs to be built, and prioritise functionality and thus forms a highly iterative and incremental process (Hass, 2007). APM could be considered as an overall strategy focused on thriving in an unpredictable environment. A model of agile development is shown in Appendix 3. Thus, Agile Project Management is managing a project in such a way as to produce deliverables in fairly short phases of time. The delivery time in this is typically 2-4 weeks rather than many months or even years. Traditional project management is a linear approach that involves a detailed planning before the project starts. Even though APM can use many of the traditional project 3|Page

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Agile Project Management

management techniques with enhanced modification and stronger leadership (Augustine et al., 2005), Hass (2007) argues that APM provides much better flexibility and collaboration with enough planning as process increments with building on, gathering inputs and learning from customer feedbacks. The traditional approach (waterfall approach) tries not to change the scope whereas agile management expects and welcome change in scope and focus on delivering value and achieving business objectives quickly. An illustration of this is done in Appendix 4. So, in APM the emphasis is moved from planning to execution (Chin, 2004).

A transition from traditional to agile project management should take into account of (Augustine, 2006): The point of interest is moving away from plans and artefacts towards customer satisfaction and relations.  Creation of an integrated core project team and an integrated peripheral project team instead of traditional silos.  Concentration should be on the context of the project rather than the content.  Encouraging continuous improvement by focusing on reflections and by analysing, adapting and improving processes and practises.  Managing the flow of value, not activities.  Corrective action is replaced by adaptive action as a means to response to change.  Collaborative planning is prioritised than up-front planning.  Customer prioritised time based delivery instead of manager negotiated scope based delivery.  Use of essential value focused metrics instead of traditional project metrics based on time, cost and quality.

1.1. AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

The CAS-based agile project management framework aims to achieve its objectives within the schedule (time, cost and quality), while satisfying the customers. The key principles of APM includes focus on customer value, iterative and incremental delivery, intense collaborations of various functionalities, small integrated teams, self organisation and small but continuous improvement. The agile project manager needs to understand the importance of mutual interactions and its effects among various parts of the project and needs to steer them in the direction of continuous learning and adaptation (Augustine et al., 2005). The APM framework prescribes the six practises for managing agile projects and they are listed below:1.1.1. Guiding Vision 4|Page

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This helps foresee and familiarize the changing conditions. The objective of guiding vision is to translate project vision into simple statements so as to make a mental model of project aims. Then this will be communicated to all team members to create a shared vision so as to identify and nurture this and transform it into a powerful influence in team behaviour (Elliot, 2008). The team will be guided by defining, disseminating, and sustaining that shared vision. So, guiding vision could be seen as the aggregate of three component visions: team vision, project vision and product vision. Augustine et al. (2005) describes that this guiding vision will make even the lower level individual capable of carrying out the responsibilities in the absence of his senior executives.

1.1.2. Organic (small and dynamic) teams Based on the organic CAS model, a self organising agile project team will be structured and formed. An effective integration of the team into a larger enterprise by facilitating collaboration and teamwork is also a part of this. It also aims to encourage diversified roles so that the team members can develop into generalising specialists who actively seeks to gain new skills in existing specialities. By allowing the team members to join or leave the team, it supports dynamic team composition and adaptability to changing external conditions (Augustine et al., 2005). The team maintains most favourable internal channels of communication and coordination while trying to negate the effect of interaction penalty. Moreover, by a parallel working of several smaller and organic sub teams could deliver the results of a larger team. 1.1.3. Light touch management style The traditional approach of control (by viewing through the prism of control) fails to accommodate the dynamic processes and faces the challenge to reflect according to the changing environment. Light touch comprises of an effective control of team members using a delicate mix of forced and emergent orders (Elliot, 2008). It aims to manage the team by focusing on customer value and allowing team autonomy and flexibility. Its strengths lie in establishing a decentralised control that suspends the reoccurring of decision making, viewing team members as individuals and treating them accordingly, focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses and thus leveraging people’s uniqueness (ibid.) 1.1.4. Simple Rules The objective of simple rules is to employ a set of straightforward, flexible methodology rules that allow agile teams to deliver business value quickly and consistently, and establish and support the teams set of guiding 5|Page

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practises and behaviour (Elliot, 2008). CAS supports following this simple rules which are acknowledged by the team members so that the team can regulate or add new practises as needed. Moreover, the practises that aren’t being followed are identified and the obstacles are removed in course of time. 1.1.5. Free and open information In APM world, there is a free flow of information and the team benefits from the power of knowledge regardless of the source. The candidness in information exchange is an important aspect in the degree of interaction between the team members (Augustine et al., 2005). Information transfer between other associated external groups is also encouraged by the practise of free and open information. This information exchange among the team members is considered as an important commitment in front of the team.

1.1.6. Adaptive leadership The objective of adaptive leadership is to track and observe the project for timely and relevant feedback and apply organized measures for learning and adapting (Elliot, 2008). It is a real challenge to lead a team by promoting small organic groups, establishing a guiding vision and simple rules, campaigning open information exchange and managing with a light touch. The agile manager should recognize the effects of the mutual relations among a project’s diverse parts and manoeuvres them in the course of continuous learning and adaptation (Augustine, et al., 2005). 2. BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Even though agile methods may not fit for every project, they do provide valuable benefits in the context of some specific business problems. Apart from all the benefits analysed in this report, there are three main benefits from agile techniques and they are (Aguanno, 2005): Reducing Risk Improved control and improved communication are the key drivers which reduce risk in agile project management.  Improving Control A less rigid, structured control gives the manager the power of better control of the project in situations of high levels of change. This will make the manager to better respond and adapt to changing requirements.  Improving Communication

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Communication, being a key to any project, is better fostered in APM rather than in traditional project management methods. The small, stand-alone agile projects are less troublesome and more in harmony with the industry’s growing requirements for rapid expansion and dealing with continuous change. However Boehm & Turner (2005), identifies three critical challenges for software managers in adapting agile approach in large organisations: Development Process Conflict This arises when an integration of agile, lightweight method with the conventional industrial method is required without compromise on the key aspects of each approach. Traditional methods concentrate on optimising development over a longer phase of time, while APM focuses on immediately delivering functionality (working with different life cycles) (Elliot, 2008). Overseeing diversity in teams and subsystems is also proven to be a challenge. Moreover, accommodating agile practises in legacy systems also raises several questions. Being primarily functional and reasonably informal make APM vulnerable to work in all systems engineering verification and validation approach (Boehm, 2005).

 Business Process Conflict The level of uncertainty and ambiguity in an agile approach is comparatively high. Corporate world will favour a near-perfect prediction rather than difficult-toestimate task. Another argument against APM is that it don’t support the necessary documentation and infrastructure required for meeting the criteria for CMMI, ISO or other process standards, and this adversely affect the image of the organisation.  People Conflict People issues could be the most critical in improving the processes. Collocation and conveying and moulding them to the multi tasking model will be a challenge to project managers. Moreover, APM needs onsite clients, significant customer interaction and feedback, and customer contribution for acceptance testing (Boehm, 2005).

1. AGILE CONTROL IN APPLICATION LEVEL For a reactive JIT system, an agile system proved to react to an unstable change in demand and satisfy the required levels (Takahashi, 2000), by interlinking and coordinating tasks. The likes of Prince2 and PMI’s PMBOK give an engineering perspective to the software activities. Agile systems can prove themselves to be effective in the field of IT 7|Page

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systems by emphasizing on rapid and flexible adaptation to changes in process, product and developmental environment (Alleman, 2002). Power et al. (2001) argues that embracing agile management strengthens the supply chain management by promoting productivity, new product development and customer satisfaction. The pre-design and design aspects in construction phases could be made simpler by using APM techniques (Owen et al., 2006). Similarly with its standing out features and characteristics agile project management has made a secured place for itself in the corporate world mangers and is building on that.

2. CONCLUSION This report analyses agile project management and its characteristics. Also a comparison with the traditional project management is carried out. However being simple and elegant in its form, APM is a costly process. Moreover, APM demands a team with multi-skilled, self-organised, and self-disciplined employees who can function with some degree of independence from the rest of the organisation and a project manager who can effectively lead the group.

3. REFERENCE Aguanno, K. (2005). Managing Agile Projects. Multi-Media Publications Inc. Alleman, G. (2002). Agile Project Management Methods for IT Projects. In E. Carayannis, & Y. Kwak, The Story of Managing Projects: A Global Cross-Disciplinary Collection of Perspectives (pp. 1-22). Greenwood Press/Quorum Books. APM. (2000). Definitions. Retrieved November 18, 2009, from APM: http://www.apm.org.uk Augustine, S. (2006). Managing Agile Projects. Prentice Hall. Augustine, S., Payne, B., Sencindiver, F., & Woodcock, S. (2005). Agile Project Management: Steering from the Edges. Communications of the ACM , 48 (12), 85-89. Barney, J. (1991). Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage. Journal of Management , 17 (1), 99-120. 8|Page

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Boehm, B., & Turner, R. (2005). Management Challenges to Implementing Agile Processes in Traditional Development Organizations. IEEE Software , 30-39. Chin, G. (2004). Agile Project Management. New York: AMACOM. Elliot, S. (2008). Agile Project Management. University of Helsinki. Hass, K. (2007). The Blending of Traditional and Agile Project Management. PM World Today , 9 (5), 1-8. Karlesky, M., & Vander Voord, M. (2008). Agile Project Management. Embedded Systems Conference, (pp. 247-267). Boston. Kerzner, H. (2003). Project Management (8th ed.). Ohio: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Olson, D. (2009, May 3). Dale Olson Consulting. Retrieved November 18, 2009, from http://www.daleolsonconsulting.com/ Owen, R., Koskela, L., Henrich, G., & Codinhoto, R. (July 2006). Is Agile Project Management Applicable to Construction. Proceedings IGLC 14 (pp. 51-66). Santiago: Salford Center for Research and Innovation. Power, D., Sohal, A., & Rahman, S. (2001). Critical Success Factors in Agile Supply Chain Management. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics , 31 (4), 247-265. Richards, C. (1996). Agile Manufacturing: Beyond Lean? Production and Inventory Management Journal , 37 (2), 60-64. Sanchez, L., & Nagi, R. (2001). A Review of Agile Manufacturing Systems. International Journal of Production Research , 39 (16), 3561-3600. Spearman, M., & Hopp, W. (1996). Factory Physics: Foundations of Manufacturing Management. Irwin,Chicago,IL. Stalk, G. (1988). Time: the next source of competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review , 41-51. Takahashi, K., & Nakamura, N. (2000). Agile Control in JIT Ordering Systems. International Journal of Agile Management Systems , 242-252. van Assen, M. (2000). Agile-based Competence Management: the Relation Between Agile Manufacturing and Time-based Competence Management. International Journal of Agile Management Systems , 2 (2), 142-155.

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4. APPENDIX

Appendix 1

Traditional Approach to the Project Management

Time/Schedule 10 | P a g e

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Cost/Budget

Agile Project Management

Quality/Specification/Performance

Appendix 2

A waterfall project lifecycle model

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Adapted from (Hass, 2007)

Appendix 3 12 | P a g e

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Agile Project Management

Adapted from (Hass, 2007)

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Appendix 4

Waterfall vs. Agile project management

Adapted from (Olson, 2009)

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