What is Agile Project Management
Agile Project Management Definition: Managing projects at a certain scale can get quite complex; especially if you managing a large team. Despite the fact that it have gotten more complex over the years. They have been a lot of business management methods that you came running to the rescue on to the scene. If you should dig deep into most of these methods. You began to see that they are not flexible enough for all projects; for example the water-fall method.
It follows a step-by step process, which you must adhere to until the project is finish. With these methods you set one main plan and you just work towards without making any changes throughout the process. These types of method worked great back then, but businesses have gotten a bit unpredictable over time.
You are going to need to make changes within your project management processes but following the traditional way is difficult. Changes are also happening so fast in business today and result of that you need to adapt quickly. You might be working on releasing a product and by the time you release it the market has evaporated. If you did make the necessary changes throughout the development process probably your product outcome would’ve been more successful.
The good thing is that business managers have taken notice of these inefficiencies. They’re finally using a new and better method to handle their projects. This new method is called agile project management. What is agile project management? Agile project management is a methodology you used to break down large projects into small manageable pieces you can call sprint.
At the end of each sprint you have to creating something of value is important. It will allow it to be tested either internally or externally. This will give you the freedom to get feedback from customers, team members and stakeholders. The feedback information will then help you to decide whether to continue your project on the same path or make some changes in order to make the next outcome better. This method is so much better than the traditional way.
Normally in the traditional way, designers would design the product. Then designers would bring their design to the product developers whenever they were finished with their task. Product developers would then finish their task that’s needed to be done. Then they would pass it down to another role until the product is finished.
In agile project management you got everyone working at the same time on the product. Which includes designers, product developers etc. Working really hard continuously improve the product through each sprint cycle. Agile project management is also very customer oriented, it helps you to really understand your customers more. When you have finished a sprint you can push it out into the market and let them test your product. This valuable feedback information can prove crucial to your end product’s success. It can also give you the freedom to constantly tweak the different processes as you go along if necessary. The good thing is that it wouldn’t affect the overall flow of the process.
You have 3 main steps in the agile project management life cycle; these are planning, execution and review. You can get a better scope of what each one means below.
Planning
In the planning process you are going to get together with your team and define the goals. These are going to be cornerstones of what you and your team are going to work towards. It will also help set the direction for your team. Everyone will know the different roles they should play in order to make the project successful.
Execution
You are then going to execute what you’ve planned out. To elaborate more on what sprint is because it’s really necessary for execution. The sprint is basically short time intervals probably a week or two. That you and your team have set to execute a certain plan. When creating a product this works well because during the end of each sprint you can create a feature.
You can then test your feature out in the market and get feedback in order to improve on it. Also every day you are going to organize a 15-20 minutes meeting. This meeting will help you know quickly what each member have done thus far. This will ensure that everyone contributes and they are all working well together in order to reach your sprint goal.
Review
As stated before sprints or iterations is a main part of what make up the agile management’s process. After the end of each sprint you are going to gather around everyone. Then you are going talk about the main negative and positive points from the project. You will also present the end product to show everyone what they’ve contributed to so far.
After reviewing the product it’s going to be time to push it out to the market to a group of customers so they test it. Lastly you are going to discuss ways in which to make the next sprint process better. So that next time everything runs more efficiently.
Over all agile project management is a great methodology business managers can use to develop products faster and cheaper. It helps improves communication and transparency by having everyone working simultaneously on the project. You can use this as a great management tool to break large and complex projects down into simple manageable task.
This process is also very flexible so you can tweak certain development and management processes as you go along. With all these benefits you can see agile project management is a tool that will vastly improve efficiency.