Management concepts I

Kamila M. Dudek

Alcide De Gasperi
University of Euroregional Economy
Topic for today

Agile (Project) Management

Why Agile Project Management?
Think about a today’s business, where the companies are trying to carve out a sustainable
business niche. The sectors are changing fast, and they must quickly develop a
products/service that users are prepared to pay for. This is tricky!

They can only find out so much through market research, so companies need to
experiment. This means trying a variety of different offerings. Step-by-step, they need to
learn from these and try improved offerings until they develop a solution that really works.

You can probably see that many work-related projects – particularly those involving
complex, fast-moving situations – resemble this scenario. You can be working towards
one deliverable or solving one problem, but then need to change course and
revise your plans.

If you're using a traditional project management approach, these revisions will lead to
missed deadlines, inflated costs, and increased workloads. And, in a worst-case
scenario, you can find that the situation has changed so much during the course of the
project that your final product, when it is eventually delivered, is no longer relevant.

Agile Project Management is an approach that helps you deal with these challenges.
What is Agile Project Management? 1/2

Agile Project Management is built around a flexible approach.

Team members work in short bursts on small-scale but functioning releases of a

product. They then test each release against customers' needs, instead of aiming for
a single final result that is only released at the end of the project.

The end product of an agile project may be very different from the one that was
envisaged at the outset. However, because of the checking process, team members can
be sure that the product is one that customers want.

This makes Agile Project Management particularly appropriate for new or fast-moving
businesses, for those in a fast-changing environment, or for highly complex
situations, where managers are "feeling their way forward" to find the optimum business
model. It's also helpful with urgent projects that can't wait for a full, traditional project to
be set up.
What is Agile Project Management? 2/2
Agile Project Management is a contemporary approach or philosophy for
managing software development projects. Agile drives continous improvement by
repeatedly inspecting and adapting the working process.
It allows for:
 Regular adaptation to changing circumstances, including changing requirements
 Constant collaboration in project teams and with clients
 Iterative development processes
The Origins of Agile

The elements of Agile Project Management have been around for decades. However, two events helped to lay
the foundations for the approach.

1. First, in 1986, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka published an article called "The New New Product
Development Game" in the Harvard Business Review. In it, the authors outlined a new way of developing
products that resembled a rugby match.
They imagined a project management approach in which, just as on the pitch, team members would
achieve their goal by constantly re-evaluating the situation and responding accordingly. Projects
would therefore evolve, but would lead to products that met customers' needs more fully as a
result.

2. The second event occurred in 2001, when a group of software and project experts met to discuss what their
most successful projects had in common. They created the Agile Project Manifesto, which outlined the values
and principles that underpinned Agile Project Management. The key element of Agile Manifesto is that we
must trust people and their ability to collaborate . For this reason, the specific agile methodologies
developed tap the abilities of team members by emphasizing teamwork and collaboration throughout
the life-cycle of the project.
Agile Manifesto

Individuals and interactions over processes and

tools

Working software over comprehensive

documentation
Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Definition of Agile Manifesto Items
Key Principles
Characteristics & principles

 Self-organizing teams
 Product progresses in a series of two- to- four-week “sprints”
 Requirements are captured as items in a list of “product backlog”
 Uses generative rules to create an agile environment for delivering
projects
 Eliminate waste : Automate any repetitive task, like acceptance testing
or product build
 Regular, rapid feedback : Make small changes and test/integrate/build
immediately and for immediate feedback work by pair
 Integrate early : Difficulty of integrating new code grows exponentially
with size of change
 Code ownership : The team develop code. Work together, agree
common standarts. Avoid strong code ownership, it would be good
weak or collective ownership.
 Emerge design : Avoid over-engineering, only design and build what is
required today
Waterfall Model

The Agile Project Management was a reaction to traditional or waterfall project management
techniques, which were associated with longer delivery cycles and higher project failure rates.

REQUIREMENTS

DESIGN

DEVELOPMENT
You complete one phase before moving on to the
next phase. You rarely aim to re-visit a ‘phase’ once it’s
completed. That means, you better get whatever TESTING

you’re doing right the first time!

MAINTENANCE
Waterfall Model

But..
You don’t realize any value until the
end of the project Changes
You leave the testing until the end
REQUIREMENTS
You don’t seek approval from the
stakeholders until late in the day
DESIGN

DEVELOPMENT
Skipped
Takes too long
TESTING

This approach is highly risky, often more costly and

MAINTENANCE
generally less efficient than Agile approaches
Waterfall Model

Bureaucratic

Unlike traditional Waterfall Project

Management here in Agile Project Slow
Management project manager is not
burdened with balancing project scope,
cost, quality, risk and adapting as Waterfall Model
requirement change.

Agile Project Management divides these

Demeaning
responsibilities among three agile roles,
which makes process more easy and
efficient.

Inconsistent
Waterfall vs Agile – comparison video
Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 1/5

A light-weight agile process tool

Split your organization into small, cross-functional, self-
organizing teams.

Split your work into a list of small, concrete deliverables. Sort the list by priority
and estimate the relative effort of each item.
Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 2/5
Agile methods break tasks
into small increments with
minimal planning, and do
not directly involve long-
term planning. Iterations are
short time frames
("timeboxes") that typically
last from one to four weeks.
Each iteration involves a team
working through a full
software development cycle
including planning,
requirements analysis,
design, coding, unit testing,
and acceptance testing when
a working product is
demonstrated to
stakeholders. This helps
minimize overall risk, and lets
the project adapt to changes
quickly.
Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 3/5

Split time into short fixed-length iterations/ sprints

(usually 2 – 4 weeks), with potentially shippable
code demonstrated after each iteration.

Optimize the release plan and update priorities in

collaboration with the customer, based on insights
gained by inspecting the release after each iteration.

Optimize the process by having a retrospective

after each iteration.

January May
Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 4/5

So instead of a large group spending a

long time building a big thing, we have a
small team spending a short time building a small thing.

But integrating regularly to see the whole.

Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 5/5

The project/ product is described as a list of features: the backlog.

The features are described in terms of user stories.
The scrum team estimates the work associated with each story.
Features in the backlog are ranked in order of importance.

Result: a ranked and weighted list of product features, a roadmap.

Daily scrum meeting to discuss What did you do yesterday? What will you do today?
Any obstacles?
Agile Model (Scrum Framework) 5/5

Product/ Project Owner

Scrum Team

Team roles: Scrum Master

1. Product Owner: It handles setting project goals, adapting to changing

project requirements.
2. Scrum Master: Guides the team to prioritize their tasks and removes
impediments to handling their tasks. Agile Project Management with
Scrum is entirely new thing.
3. Team Members: Handles most of the task assignment, progress reporting
and quality control for the product.
Iterative Scrum
Lean approach to agile development Kanban
Similar to Scrum in the sense that you focus on features as opposed to
groups of features – however Lean takes this one step further again.

You select, plan, develop, test and deploy one feature (in its simplest
form) before you select, plan, develop, test and deploy the next
feature.

Aim is to eliminate ‘waste’ wherever possible…

 Kanban
Visualize the workflow
Split the work into pieces, write each item on a card and
put on the wall
Use named columns to illustrate where each item is in
the workflow

Measure the lead time (average time to complete one item, sometimes called
“cycle time”)
Optimize the process to make lead time as small and predictable as possible
Kanban Board Illustration
Mary’s example
The differences

Agile Project Management Traditional Project Management

Teams are self-directed and are free to accomplish deliverables as they Teams are typically tightly controlled by a project manager. They work
choose, as long as they follow agreed rules. to detailed schedules agreed at the outset.

Project requirements are developed within the process as needs and Project requirements are identified before the project begins. This can
uses emerge. This could mean that the final outcome is different from sometimes lead to "scope creep," because stakeholders often ask for
the one envisaged at the outset. more than they need, "just in case."

User testing and customer feedback happen constantly. It's easy to User testing and customer feedback take place towards the end of the
learn from mistakes, implement feedback, and evolve deliverables. project, when everything has been designed and implemented. This can
However, the constant testing needed for this is labor-intensive, and it mean that problems can emerge after the release, sometimes leading to
can be difficult to manage if users are not engaged. expensive fixes and even public recalls.

Teams constantly assess the scope and direction of their product or

project. This means that they can change direction at any time in the Teams work on a final product that can be delivered some time – often
process to make sure that their product will meet changing needs. months or years – after the project begins. Sometimes, the end product
Because of this, however, it can be difficult to write a business case at or project is no longer relevant, because business or customer needs
the outset, because the final outcome is not fully known. have changed.
Benefits of Agile Project Management

• Better Product Quality

• Improved Performance Visibility

• Agile Project Management reduced the risk of absolute project failure

• It lets team to deliver a prototype and improve upon it with every cycle

• Clients can provide feedback as the project evolves without holding the project up as feedback
is part of the process.
Conclusion

Over the last 10 years, there is an ever-increasing volume of success stories, where companies have
dramatically improved the success and performance of their IT development teams and projects
with agile practices. This has caused agile to be widely adopted across a variety of industries,
including media and technology, large corporates, and even government.

Agile Framework helps teams to benefit from:

• Faster Time to Deliver/ Market
• Reduce Uncertainty and Risk
• Increase Return on Investment (ROI) by focusing on Customer Value

Among these different agile methodologies, Scrum has proved to be extremely successful
worldwide over the last 20 years.
 Thank you
for your attention!