Agile Project Management

Overview

Agile processes offer profound challenges to the way we manage software projects. Working iteratively, within-project feedback, intense stakeholder involvement and short cycle times mark a strong break from traditional project management techniques. Agile processes also offer the possibility of more disciplined and controllable projects—this course is about teaching you how to use this capability.

Prerequisites

Previous experience of project management is strongly recommended. No previous knowledge of agile processes is required.

Format

This highly interactive course blends tutorial, class discussion and question and answer sessions.

Outline

How the agile mindset is different

• Re-evaluation of deliverables from process, relationship to business, quality, timeliness, etc.

Potential benefits of an agile approach

• Earlier ROI
• Lower failure risk
• Better project management
• Closer customer relationship
• Higher quality
• Greater sustainability
• More appropriate deliverables
• Caveat: “there are no silver bullets”

Comparison with traditional (waterfall-inspired) processes

• Comparing process models
• Differences in value streams
• Managing issues with rework

Understanding the agile project lifecycle

• Projects
• Phases (“releases”)
• Iterations
• Stories
• Story lifecycle

Units of work in agile processes

• Stories – the units of requirements
• Formats for stories
• Articulating business benefits of stories
• Scope minimization
• Splitting, merging and restructuring stories
• Acceptance / sign-off criteria
• Estimation of cost
• Cost/benefit-driven prioritization
• Iteration planning; the velocity metric
• Tracking progress - what “done” means
• Tracking stories in play
• States of a story

Key decision points and stakeholder involvement

• Hierarchy of requirements
• Projects as a process of refining a goal to implementation
• Key decision points in the process
• Stakeholders in decision-making

Effective day-to-day processes

• Avoiding multi-tasking
• Streamlining story lifecycle
• Minimizing the scope of each story
• Tracking each story
• Working directly with others
• Avoiding intermediate work-products
• Having work-products do double duty
• Using team resources effectively
• Building team capability
• Maintaining sustainability and quality

The changing role of the project manager

• Team should be more self-organizing
• PM’s role becomes more outward-facing
• PM is part of team
• Adopt an “enabling” or facilitative management style

Typical responsibilities

• Iteration planning / work-queue maintenance
• In-team / out-of-team communications channel
• Iteration tracking
• Participating in daily stand up meetings
• Acting as umbrella and unblocker
• Organizing show+tell meetings, iteration retrospectives
• Organizing project kick-off (together with e.g. BA)
• Organizing project retrospectives
• Not bargaining down estimates
• Bargaining down requirements
• Ensuring “information radiators” maintained

Guide to adoption

• Case studies / lessons learned

Options

Not quite what you want? Contact us if you’d like to shorten or lengthen this course, aim it at a different audience, cover particular topics or combine it with our other courses, briefings or services.

Further information and booking

Please contact us for further information or to book this course.

Suggested follow-ups

• Agile for Business Analysts
• Agile software development