Understanding what drives the Agile approach

Agile project management is a flexible, interactive method of planning, performing, and tracking the activities involved in continuous development, improvement, and delivery of a product. While initially used primarily for software development projects, in the years since 2001, Agile approaches have been used on projects in everything from construction to marketing, finance to education, book publishing to engineering, manufacturing to event planning, and many others.

The word “agile” (defined as “able to move quickly and easily” and “able to think and understand quickly”) was first used to describe this method in 2001, when a group of software designers published the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” shown in Table 18-1.

As described in Table 18-1, the main premises of Agile are the following:

• People and their collaboration, communication, and commitment to the project and to one another are the most important resources for a project’s success.
• The success of a project is measured by the extent to which the products it produces successfully meet the client’s needs and expectations.
• An understanding of the client’s true needs and what it will take to address them is best achieved through mutual collaboration between the client and the project team.
• Rather than refusing to acknowledge when changes occur that will affect your project, successfully meeting your client’s needs requires that you identify the changes and assess their potential impact on your project at the earliest possible time and appropriately respond to them effectively and efficiently.

The authors of the manifesto prepared a set of 12 working guidelines that they felt embodied the principles laid out in the manifesto. You can view these principles at https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.

Taking a look at the elements of Agile when implemented through Scrum

Agile is a set of values and principles that describe a product environment that emphasizes continuous improvement of the product, the use of capable and highly motivated team members, frequent interaction between the design team and the customer, a willingness to accept and deal with changes as they occur, and the frequent delivery of working software to the customer throughout the project. However, because it doesn’t include a specific set of procedures, actors, and items to be produced, Agile must be implemented through the use of an Agile framework.

While several such frameworks are available, the most commonly used is Scrum. Scrum is an Agile framework because it adheres to the general principles and guidelines contained in the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” (see the previous section). It supports iterative and incremental project delivery using frequent feedback and collaborative decision-making, and it’s characterized by transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

The actual use of the Scrum technique is relatively straightforward. Following are the main components of the process:

• Scrum master: Keeps the process and advocates for and protects the team (often, a project manager assumes this role).
• Product owner: Represents the customer and has authority to make decisions.
• Team (usually 7–10 people): Includes people with all the skills required for the project and is jointly responsible for delivering the product.
• Backlog: A prioritized list of tasks and requirements the final product needs (created and maintained by the product owner).
• Sprint (usually 1-4 weeks): A predetermined amount of time the team has to complete the features selected. The Sprint has five different types of meetings:
  • Backlog grooming (also called backlog refinement): Creating, adding, and removing items from the backlog.
  • Sprint planning: A meeting with the team to select a set of work from the product backlog to deliver during a Sprint. This meeting normally takes four hours to a full day.
  • Daily Scrum (also called the daily standup): A short meeting for the development team to share progress and challenges and plan work for the day. Ideally the team members are in the same place, the meeting usually lasts no more than 15 minutes, is held at the same time and place each day, and addresses the following questions:
    • What did you accomplish yesterday?
    • What are you planning to accomplish today?
    • What, if anything, is blocking your progress?
  • Sprint review meeting: A meeting in which the team demonstrates to the product owner what it has completed during the Sprint.
  • Sprint retrospective meeting: A meeting during which the team looks for ways to improve the product and the process based on a review of the actual performance of the development team.

For more information on the different activities you perform when you manage your project using Agile as implemented through Scrum, see Agile Project Management For Dummies and Scrum For Dummies, both written by Mark C. Layton and published by Wiley.

Comparing the Agile and traditional (Waterfall) approaches

Agile was developed for projects requiring significant flexibility and speed and is composed of short delivery cycles. Agile may be best-suited for projects requiring less control and real-time communication within self-motivated team settings. Agile is highly iterative, allowing for rapid adjustments throughout a project.

On the other hand, the Waterfall methodology (covered in the rest of this book) is sequential in nature. It’s comprised of static phases executed one after the other in a specific order. Waterfall allows for increased control throughout each phase but can be less flexible if scope changes are requested later.

Table 18-2 presents a comparison of how each project management approach addresses certain important issues during the life of a project. As the table indicates, in general, the Waterfall approach is the more rigid of the two, with less flexibility to deal with issues that weren’t identified at the outset.

The choice of which approach you use to manage a particular project depends on the characteristics of that project. If you expect the project to be orderly and predictable, with requirements that are very well known, clearly defined, and fixed and customers who know what they want in advance, you may consider using a Waterfall methodology. However, if the project is one where the final product isn’t clearly defined, your clients need the ability to change scope after the project gets underway, and/or rapid deployment is the goal, you may choose to use an Agile approach.

Looking at your software options

When your project is sufficiently complex, you can use software for a wide variety of tasks, including storing and retrieving important information, analyzing and updating that information, and preparing presentations and reports that describe and visualize the information and results of the analyses.

The available software falls into two categories: standalone specialty software and integrated project management software. Each type has benefits and drawbacks, as we discuss in the following sections.

Helping your software perform at its best

No matter which type of project management software you choose (either standalone specialty software or integrated project management software), your project’s success depends on how well you coordinate and support your project planning and control activities. Table 18-3 illustrates which software supports which activities and how you can ensure that each activity is performed correctly.

Introducing project management software into your organization

Before you rush out and buy any project management software, plan how to maximize its capabilities and avoid associated pitfalls. Do the following to help you select and install your software:

• Be sure you have a firm grasp of project planning and control approaches before you consider any software.
• See what software other groups in your organization are using or have used; find out what they like, what they don’t like, and why.
• If possible, ask someone who already has a copy of the software whether you can spend a few minutes exploring its operation.
• See if the software vendor offers a free trial (most do) so you can try the software for yourself.
• After the package is on your computer, load a simple project or a small part of a larger project to practice (that is, enter the activities, durations, interdependencies, resources, and so on).
• Use only a few of the program’s capabilities at first (determine the effect of small changes on your schedule, print out some simple reports, and so on) and use more capabilities as you get more comfortable with the software and feel the need for them.
• Consider attending a formal training program, or at least familiarizing yourself with the vendor’s online knowledgebase, as you become comfortable accessing the software’s different capabilities.
• If you’re still not comfortable choosing the project management software for your organization yourself, consider engaging the services of an outside consulting firm with experience helping organizations like yours select and implement the software.

After you’ve undertaken these steps, you can effectively use software to support your project planning and control activities. On an ongoing basis, ensure that you obtain all updates and changes to the software, and consider purchasing software upgrades that introduce significant new capabilities.

Defining social media

In its most general sense, the term social media refers to the different online technology tools (websites and applications) that enable you to share and create content easily in a two-way, dynamic interchange via the Internet.

In addition to email and instant messaging to maintain contact with and to share and obtain information from your team members, here are some of the more popular online information sharing tools you can use:

• Online collaboration tools: Microsoft Teams has risen to the top of this category over the past couple of years as the need has grown for dispersed teams, across different geographies and time zones, to securely and reliably collaborate in real time, share media, chat individually or in groups, and videoconference and speak with others over the Internet (as opposed to using landlines or cellular service). Teams integrates easily with other Microsoft products, like Project, OneDrive (for file storage), and OneNote (for note taking), as well as non-Microsoft products.

  Many of the other tools mentioned in this book also offer embedded online collaboration capabilities, even where that is not the tool’s primary focus. For example, Smartsheet is, at its core, an online data collection, storage, and visualization tool, but offers robust automated alerting, as well as commenting and messaging between collaborators. Many cloud-based file storage sites and apps offer either native collaboration tools or integrate seamlessly with the vendor’s other collaboration tools. Google Drive is an example of a file storage service that integrates with most of Google’s complementary collaboration tools, such as Gmail, Meet, Chat, and others.

• Social networking apps and websites: Apps and websites where people can post online profiles of their personal and business information and interests and link to others with similar interests, backgrounds, and pursuits. This assemblage of like-minded people is typically called a group or a community, depending on the site, and you can join existing ones or start your own. Social networking sites like LinkedIn (linkedin.com) and Yammer (yammer.com), for example, can facilitate sharing information about your project and related subjects with team members and others in your project audience. You can also obtain professional and personal information and maintain relationships with those people.

  LinkedIn is the most used business- and career-oriented social networking platform. Members include current and past job-related information in their profiles, as well as personal interests and activities. In addition, its groups are made up of people from specified companies and organizations, as well as ones composed of people with particular subject matter interests. As an example, LinkedIn has roughly 14,000 groups focused on some aspect of project management. To see a complete listing, in the search box at the top of the homepage, enter “project management” and select “Groups” from the menu under the search box. For some perspective, this same search yielded approximately 6,000 groups when the 5th edition of this book was published just five years ago.

  Yammer is a social network focused on meeting the information needs of businesses and organizations. Yammer has special-interest groups and company groups, and members can send several types of short, quick messages to the general population or members of specified groups.

  Other social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on, can potentially offer some benefit, although often at the cost of decreased focus and productivity. These platforms are tailored more toward the “social” aspect of social networking.

  Be sure to familiarize yourself with any relevant social media policies established by your organization, as many companies have begun restricting the types of social media allowed to be utilized with company resources and during business hours.

• Wikis: Collections of web pages on a particular topic with dynamic content that can be maintained and updated in real time by users. Wikis can be useful as repositories of information and experience for projects currently underway, as well as to encourage collaboration among team members and between team members and audiences. Wikis are typically developed and created internally and can be organized and tailored in any way that benefits the team, the project, or the organization.
• Blogs: Information repositories on a particular topic that are made up of short articles, or posts, and their corresponding reader comments. Blogs are useful for soliciting from or making subject matter and project-related information available to diverse audiences and geographically distributed team members.

Your team can use each of these social media vehicles throughout your project’s life to facilitate effective information sharing and build interpersonal relationships among team members and with project drivers and supporters (see Chapter 4 for details on the different types of project stakeholders that may influence your project).

Exploring how social media can support your project planning and performance

Project success depends heavily on accurate and timely information sharing, productive interpersonal relationships among the team and with other project stakeholders, and effective collaboration among team members. Social media can facilitate one-way (going from the sender to the receiver with no opportunity for clarification or confirmation) and two-way (going from the sender to the receiver and from the receiver back to the sender) information sharing. In addition, it can support passive (collecting existing data on a subject) and active (asking for and receiving certain data from an audience) data gathering (see Chapter 15 for more information on the communication process and ways to improve it).

Table 18-4 presents examples of instances where social media can be used to facilitate essential communication and relationship building activities in the various stages of a project’s life cycle.

Using social media to support your project communications

To ensure that your use of social media provides your project team with responsive communications support, consider the following questions when thinking about setting up your project’s presence on social media:

• What types of problems will your team be addressing? Some problems may require active collaboration among team members, while others may involve one-way communication of existing data.
• How sensitive is the content that would be shared? The platforms in use today have varying capabilities for ensuring that information is shared only with selected recipients. For instance, Teams can securely send messages and store files within your organization; however, guests from outside your organization can also be added to your Teams, affording them access to communications and media that could be sensitive. Additionally, there can be quite a large difference between blasting out an announcement to all members of your project or group within Teams and sending an announcement to all of your LinkedIn followers, which could be seen by their followers, and their followers’ followers, and so on (this is, after all, the benefit of social networks).
• Is your communication unidirectional or bidirectional? All forms of social media discussed in this chapter can handle one-way communications effectively. Bidirectional communications are best handled with the use of collaboration tools like Teams, wikis, or by sites that can establish groups or communities.
• Will your data gathering be active or passive? If you use passive data gathering, check to be sure the data routinely collected and maintained by the site is adequate to meet your needs.
• What platforms do your team members use today? All things being equal, consider using platforms with which your team is familiar and that they use currently. People are more likely to make use of capabilities with which they have prior familiarity.

Be sure to include in your written project communications management plan how you plan to use social media to support your project’s planning and management. Maximize the benefits and minimize the pitfalls associated with using social media by ensuring your communications plan addresses the following issues:

• The particular tools you and your team will use to communicate different types of information
• The person or people in charge of ensuring that everyone involved with your project follows the procedures mandated for the use of social media