Agile Project Management Overview
Agile Project Management Overview
Agile project management is an incremental and non– linear approach to planning and
managing project processes that breaks them down into smaller cycles called sprints,
or iterations. As one of the most adaptable frameworks used in project management, it
focuses on:
All this allows project teams to act promptly upon the provided feedback, implement
responsive changes at each stage of a sprint, and produce higher-quality products or services
to better respond to market trends. This system of working is often used in software
development projects as it increases predictability and risk control.
The Agile Manifesto for Software Development is a set of guiding values and principles for
implementing an Agile framework in the management of projects. It was created in 2001 by a
group of software developers as a response to the traditional, heavily regulated
methodologies used at the time.
Back then, the procedures in place outlined a strict to-do plan at the very beginning, leaving
little room for surprises. This caused a lack of flexibility, adaptability, and autonomy when
unexpected changes occurred, making it difficult for software teams to respond and
incorporate their learnings as the project progressed. Unlike industries where the process was
fixed and the outcome was predictable and stable, software development called for a better
way of working given that change was a fundamental component in the mix.
Inspired by the need to take changes into consideration so that the best possible product is
delivered, the authors of the Agile manifesto laid the foundation of a system based on shorter
development cycles (called “sprints”), a more iterative process, and continuous feedback and
testing. They gathered their ideas into a collection of values and principles that would guide
teams in the development of software and other products towards becoming agile.
If we are to sum up these essential ideas, agile project management encourages a team to:
put the human element front and center within the working processes to create a functional
product that delivers the most value to the end– user.
deliver iterations of its main product quickly and often because it is better to have a flawed but
real product rather than a perfect one, blocked in the planning stage.
get aligned, stay aligned, and work together by relying on highly collaborative processes and
strong personal foundations.
What transpires from these core values and principles is that agile methods are collaborative and
people– driven. Although developed with software in mind, they are nevertheless applicable and
useful to other types of teams as well, such as product teams or marketing teams.
Principles:
■ Customer satisfaction
■ Embrace change
■ Frequent delivery
■ Motivated individuals
■ Face-to-face conversation
■ Functional products
■ Technical excellence
■ Simplicity
■ Self-organized teams
Scrum – a framework for managing and completing complex projects that is centered
on teamwork, accountability, and iterative progress through a series of sprints.
Each Agile methodology has its own collection of practices and roles that teams can adopt or
adjust to fit their specific needs. Designed to be flexible and adaptable, Agile methodologies
encourage teams to experiment and find the procedures that work best for them.
On the other hand, Waterfall is a linear, sequential approach in which each phase of
the project must be completed before the next one can begin. It is a traditional, plan–
driven methodology where the scope, schedule, and cost of the project are determined
up front, and the project is executed according to that plan. It is best suited for
projects that have well– defined requirements and a clear understanding of the final
outcome.
Best practices used in Agile project management
Here are the main recommendations to follow if you want to effectively implement Agile
methodologies in a project:
Use visual management tools - Agile projects use visual management tools such as
Kanban boards and task boards to help teams track progress, identify bottlenecks,
collaborate, and adjust plans as needed.
Resort to automated tools - Agile teams use automated tools such as issue tracking,
testing, and continuous integration software to better manage the project and ensure
that their output is of high quality.
Task management tools - to help teams track and manage individual tasks and
subtasks.
Testing tools - to test and validate the project’s product and ensure its high quality.
Continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) tools - helping teams automate the
process of building, testing, and deploying software.
Agile metrics and reporting tools - to measure and report on progress and identify
areas for improvement.
Scheduling and time-tracking tools - such platforms help teams generate clear
schedules of their work, track time spent on tasks, and more.
In an Agile environment, a Scrum master represents a facilitator and servant leader for a
Scrum team. Unlike traditional project managers who manage the budget, personnel, project
scope and other key elements, Scrum masters act as rather coaches and guides who ensure
that participants adhere to Agile practices.
Removing obstacles that prevent the team from delivering a valuable product and
helping them to find solutions to problems.
Helping the team understand and apply Scrum principles and practices.
Ensuring the team’s adherence to the Scrum framework to improve their process.
Assisting the Product Owner in defining and prioritizing the product backlog and
ensuring that the backlog is well-maintained.
Coaching the team on how to prioritize the customer's needs, and to deliver a valuable
product.
Keeping the stakeholders informed about the progress of the project and addressing
their concerns.
A sprint is a time-boxed period that typically lasts between one and four weeks, during which
a specific set of work is completed and made ready for delivery. This means that the team’s
sprint efforts go towards creating a potentially releasable product increment, the working and
tested version of which is demonstrated to stakeholders at the end of the sprint.
Sprint Planning - used to plan and structure the work in a product backlog for the
upcoming sprint. Then, specific workable items are selected and assigned to various
team members.
Daily Scrums - short daily meetings where the team discusses progress and plans for
the day.
Sprint Reviews - designed to demonstrate the work completed during the sprint and
gather feedback.
A Background on Agile
Before we discuss the disadvantages of Agile, let’s review what this methodology is all about.
Originally developed for software delivery, Agile emphasizes delivering products in small
increments.
This incremental delivery comes with many advantages, as it allows teams to bring new products
(or at least parts of them) to market faster, incorporate customer feedback along the way and
easily experiment with new features.
Limited documentation
In Agile, documentation happens throughout a project, and often “just in time” for building the
output, not at the beginning. As a result, it becomes less detailed and often falls to the back
burner.
Fragmented output
Incremental delivery may help bring products to market faster, but it’s also a big disadvantage of
Agile methodology. That’s because when teams work on each component in different cycles, the
complete output often becomes very fragmented rather than one cohesive unit.
No finite end
The fact that Agile requires minimal planning at the beginning makes it easy to get sidetracked
delivering new, unexpected functionality. Additionally, it means that projects have no finite end,
as there is never a clear vision of what the “final product” looks like.
Difficult measurement
Since Agile delivers in increments, tracking progress requires you to look across cycles. And the
“see-as-you-go” nature means you can’t set many KPIs at the start of the project. That long game
makes measuring progress difficult.
Mitigating the disadvantages of Agile methodology requires taking more of a Lean approach by
emphasizing the importance of:
Delivering value through a quality end product rather than simply delivering a working product
Managing a clear process for delivering that product, not an uncertain route determined along
the way
Armed with knowledge about the disadvantages of Agile methodology, it’s time to take a look at
how Agile might affect your projects. And if you find the disadvantages of Agile outweigh the
benefits, remember that there are alternative methodologies for delivering better products
efficiently.
The Scrum Master Roles and Responsibilities are often misunderstood. This series will go in
detail about practical aspects of Scrum Mastery. Scrum Guide says that Scrum Master is
accountable for Scrum Team Effectiveness. It further states that Scrum master is the true leader
who serves the Scrum Team. However, the Scrum Guide is silent on how Scrum Master can
influence and help the Scrum Team to be effective. This series is going to explore exactly this
topic. Through these articles, we will try and give some practical suggestions to help you. Read
this article to find out a typical day goes for the Scrum Master.
Here in this series, we will talk about some topics like
Scrum Master Roles and Responsibilities to help with Scrum Events
Scrum Master role in Sprint Planning – Sprint planning is the Scrum Event to make a plan for the
work in Sprint. Developers are in charge of this plan the Sprint Backlog. So how can Scrum
Master contribute?
Scrum Master role Daily Scrum – Daily Scrum is the Scrum Event meant for developers to
inspect progress towards the Sprint Goal. In fact, only Developers are the mandatory participant.
This leads to the question that then how can Scrum Master help with this Scrum Event?
Scrum Master role in Sprint Review – Sprint Review is the Scrum Event where the stakeholders
and Scrum Team can collaborate together to decide the next steps to take. Scrum Master plays an
important role to ensure constructive feedback.
Scrum Master role in Sprint Retrospective Sprint Planning, the daily Scrum and Sprint Review all
see the Scrum Master as predominantly a facilitator. However, this changes with Sprint
Retrospective. Of course, the Scrum master does participate as a facilitator in the Sprint
Retrospective. But in this Scrum Event Scrum Masters role goes beyond facilitator
How Scrum Master can help with day to day working of the
Scrum Team
Causing Impediment Removal
Supporting the Product Backlog refinement
Use information radiators burn up /burn down charts to track the work of the Sprint to work more effectively
Building a Great Scrum Team
Effectively handle real life scenarios Scrum Team may face
Teaching Scrum Team about Scrum and Empiricism
What is Scrum?
Scrum is a simple empirical process that enables teams to build products incrementally in iterations, to keep
abreast of the changing market needs and align themselves to the organization's business goals.
"Scrum is an agile process that allows us to focus on delivering the highest business value in the shortest time."
- Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software
Scrum advocates self-organizing teams working towards a common goal through continuous inspection and
adaptation. A minimum viable product at the end of each iteration provides an option for the teams to quickly
get feedback from end users and respond much faster.
Scrum Methodology
Scrum is simple light weighted agile project management methodology that enables product teams to build
products incrementally in an iterative fashion through effective team collaboration. Ken Schwaber and Jeff
Sutherland are co-creators of Scrum and continue to contribute significantly to the evolution of Scrum.
Scrum forms the base for many of the other frameworks and hence it is important for an agile practitioner to
understand this methodology.
Scrum Roles
Scrum Events
Scrum Artifacts
Scrum Values
Scrum has gained popularity in the software development community. Scrum Methodology has proven to scale
across multiple teams of large organization with 900+ people. See how Jile supports Scrum Methodology.
1. Product Owner:
A Product Owner in a scrum team decides what needs to be built. This person has complete knowledge about
the market and business needs, has a vision, and owns the return on investment (ROI) or the value delivered by
the product.
Unlike traditional delivery, this person is a part of the team that delivers the product.
Negotiates with the team and business to deliver the right product at the right time
2. Scrum Master:
The Scrum Master is not a management title and cannot make decisions on behalf of the team. The Scrum
Master's major responsibility is to ensure that scrum is understood and practiced by every team member in the
true spirit.
The Scrum Master should understand the different skill sets of his or her team and group them by having the
right sheep in the right flock. A Scrum Master should guide the team such that the team does not go astray and
fall prey to excess time and energy.
Just like a shepherd, a Scrum Master must draw out quiet people during stand-up meetings or when planning
poker sessions. Whenever the team loses focus or a team member goes astray, the Scrum Master aka the
shepherd should bring the lost one back to the flock and guide appropriately.
The Scrum Master should not enforce agile practices on the team, but should do a 'Servant leadership' role.
Scrum Master should lead by example and be a living demonstration of team assets and scrum values.
He or she should create an environment of safety for the team, and guide and facilitate team collaboration. He or
she should refrain from solving problems or making decisions by guiding teams to do so.
Is a servant leader - mentors and coaches the teams on scrum theory and practices, guides them on how
they need to adapt to those, thereby realizing the benefits of scrum both at team level and organization
level.
Helps remove obstacles/impediments - supports the Development teams in removing the impediments
by reaching out to the right people, thereby ensuring a smooth development progress without disrupting
the team.
Facilitates collaboration - enables interactions within the team as well as between the team and the
Product Owner.
Teaches scrum - to the team.
Protects the teams - from external disruptions such as changes to stories in the current sprint.
Is a change agent - in growing the organization to deliver early and often, and removing waste.
3. The Development team:
The Development team in scrum is the team that has all the skills necessary to execute the backlog items. This
team is not a normal team but is committed, dedicated, and motivated to perform the best.
It is a self-organizing team that collaborates, shares their special skills and knowledge and are committed
completely to fulfil the objective.
Self-organizing - the Development team will be a self-managing group, who will decide on the tasks that
they will work on incrementally. There is no 'Manager', who controls their work.
Empowered - the team should commit to work, determine 'HOW' to deliver and decide on 'HOW MUCH'
to deliver in one iteration.
Cross-functional - the team does not segregate members as agile developers, testers or analysts and
each member has the necessary skills to deliver the product increment.
Small-sized - the Development team should ideally have 5 to 9 team members with skills sufficient to
deliver the committed work. Smaller teams will not have the bandwidth to complete a considerable work
and larger teams will increase the complexity.
Co-located - the agile team is typically co-located to ensure effective collaboration.
Committed - since the team is empowered to take decisions on the scope of work in a sprint, they are
committed to delivery, should be transparent on the progress, and highlight the impediments early on.
Dedicated - this team is focused and is 100% dedicated to product delivery.
Unlike traditional methodologies, where the commitment to deliver is made to business by the team that is not
involved in the execution, in Agile, the team that does the work commits to how much work can be executed in
a sprint.
The Development team decides how much work is to be done in a sprint, and commits to delivering a
'potentially shippable product increment (PSPI)', without sacrificing quality and speed. The team also makes
continuous self-improvements.
The progress is always measured through a working software. Scrum Documentation has three main artifacts
namely: Product backlog, Sprint backlog, Increment.
1. Product backlog:
A product backlog is a dynamic list of functionalities the product might include, such that it provides value to
users.
The Product Owner maintains this list and is responsible for creating, managing, and prioritizing the backlog by
focusing on 'WHAT' brings the highest value to the users. These are a few unique characteristics of a product
backlog:
Lists all the features and capabilities that will be taken up in iteration and delivered as a product
increment
It is refined on a continuous basis. The Product Owner and Development team collaborate and update
the details, estimate, and prioritize based on business value and size
2. Sprint backlog:
Sprint backlog is a subset of the entire product backlog that the scrum team plans to implement in one iteration
or sprint.
During the sprint planning, the team selects items from the product backlog that they commit to complete in one
sprint and thereby, create the sprint backlog. The Product Owner and Scrum Master should not provide inputs
that may impact the team's decision. Sprint backlog has:
Subset of product backlog items that the teams commit to implement in one sprint
A focus on 'HOW' the team does the work and delivers the value in one sprint
A story or task board that is used by the teams to view backlog and what the individuals sign up for work
after backlog prioritization
Provision for the Development teams to track the sprint progress and check their alignment with sprint
goals
3. Increment:
An increment is the work delivered at the end of every sprint. Typically, after every iteration there will be a
Product Increment (PI) that delivers value and the final product will be a working software.
This increment is a sum of all the capabilities that were delivered in the previous sprints as a part of the PI. At
the end of every sprint, the Product Owner decides whether to release the working product increment or wait
until the next release.
Does not exceed a maximum of one calendar month as this will increase the risk due to changes in
requirements and therefore, may not provide the perceived business value at the end of the sprint
Has a goal or 'definition of done' associated with every sprint that actually measures the success of the
sprint
Can be cancelled by the Product Owner, if the goal or the need for the sprint becomes obsolete due to
changing market needs
Scrum advocates specific types of activities or meetings within a sprint to avoid the traditional formal meetings.
These events and meetings are conducted at regular intervals and happen at specific periods of the sprint.
Sprint planning
Daily scrum
Sprint review
Sprint retrospective
Splits product backlog items into smaller items or merges smaller ones into larger items and estimates
those
Sprint planning meeting happens at the start of every sprint. This helps the Product Owner and Development
teams to plan the product backlog items that will be taken up for implementation during the sprint. The
Development team performs the following activities during this meeting:
Considers and discusses product backlog items with the Product Owner
The Development team is empowered and solely decides how much work is to be taken based on sprint
capacity.
The scrum team crafts a goal called the sprint goal as the essential focus of that sprint
Development team decides how to produce the next product increment that meets 'definition of done'
Work to be done in initial days is split into small units of one day or even less
Daily scrum is a 15-minute time-boxed event in which the team manages its daily activities. Daily Scrum is also
called the daily stand-up meeting.
The scrum team meets every day, preferably at the same time and same place, so that it becomes a habit. During
the meeting, each member answers three critical questions:
It is essential that all the members of the development team are available for the daily stand-up meeting. The
daily stand-up meeting is for the Development team to track progress towards the sprint goal, and they should
participate enthusiastically to collaborate with each other.
The daily scrum also ensures that the impediments blocking the progress of the sprint are identified and resolved
without further delay. Detailed problem solving does not happen during this meeting. Broadcasting individual
updates to everyone in the team avoids unnecessary meetings.
This event enhances team communication and transparency, thereby enabling teams to be self-organized and
take faster decisions.
A sprint review is an event that happens at the end of every sprint, where the scrum team demonstrates the work
that is done in the sprint to the stakeholders. The following happens during this meeting:
A demo of the product increment showcasing the new features and underlying technology
Feedback from the review provides input to the team to further discuss on refining the existing backlogs
and plan for future sprints
The Scrum Master facilitates this review meeting that is typically attended by all the stakeholders invited
by the Product Owner
Sprint review is essentially a way in which the team inspects and adapts to the next sprint and the overall
product release
During a sprint retrospective meeting, the scrum team inspects the previously completed sprint and identifies
areas of improvement to be enacted for the upcoming sprints. This happens after every sprint and right after
sprint review in which the whole scrum team participates.
The team introspects on what went well in terms of collaboration, planning, process, and tools
They try to identify potential improvements that can be taken up in the next sprint to make the scrum
processes more efficient by learning from previous shortfalls
They decide on what could be done in the next sprint by taking into consideration the major
improvements
Scrum Master ensures that the teams improve their skills and knowledge during the scrum process so
that they become more efficient in the next sprint
All the above events in the scrum process framework enable teams to deliver a potentially shippable working
software in short iterations. This also enables teams to capture feedback, inspect, and adapt for the next iteration.
How to perform sprint retrospective?
No sprint is complete without sprint retrospection! Identify 'What went well', 'What can be improved' and the
action items to be taken up to deliver better results in the next sprint.
Successful use of scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in these 5 values
Quick scrum deliverables - The projects practicing scrum framework are likely to deliver their outcomes
(scrum deliverables) sooner in a productive manner.
Easy to groom - Using the Scrum framework makes it flexible for everyone to refine in case any mistakes
are identified mid-way and to fix those mistakes.
Thrift usage - Time and money used effectively, whenever needed, thereby producing budget-friendly
projects in a short period.
Easy to cope - Scrum being a sub-group of agile can encompass changes in its project that are required
by the client at ease with the help of its short sprint cycles and regular feedback.
Lightweight process - This includes that the Scrum framework receives periodic updates of the progress
done throughout the sprint through the events.
Manageable units - However large a project may be, it could always be broken down into feasible items
that can be realized in achievable sprints.
Versatile - Grants access to any stage of development and allows maximum changeable actions within
the scope of scrum methodology.
Direct and clear - Each team member is aware in great clarity of each other's advancement made during
the daily stand-up meetings.
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