Agile is an iterative approach towards project management and accepts uncertainty as a given. Purely based on the concept of “inspect and adapt”, agile methodologies have been used by enterprises to enhance the quality of deliverables.
Projects tend to deviate from the plan during execution due to constraints that overran original estimates. These include time, cost, scope, quality and resources utilized. The only viable option a project manager is left with then is to adapt to the change and revise the project plan to meet the desired goal.
You can practice agile principles with other project management principles because it is a receptive structure. However, mastering agility in project management requires a little understanding of the five fundamental steps.
1. Timebox Meetings
Meetings at regular intervals with specific teams enable you to make sure that work is aligned with the goals and if not, control measures can be taken to go back on track. Agile project management focuses on maintaining flexibility around the project tasks to keep the processes running. Generally, timely meetings help one practice agile methodology keeping everyone aligned to the required changes and planning for improvisation.
2. Strategize Resource Management
A resource manager abiding by agile’s principles requires comprehensive team details and their real-time utilization status in order to stay prepared for sudden changes. The right information about your team will give you the upper hand needed for assigning tasks and altering the roles of individual members on different operations.
With resource management software, it’s a simple matter of finding out the status of skills availability and its relevance for the work in question in order to allocate the right resources for the right job. What’s more, it warns you ahead of time if overbookings or untapped resources remain, ensuring employee workloads are optimized.
3. Scenario Planning
The whole idea of agile is to prioritize. Scenario planning involves translating vision into a roadmap followed by the development of micro-level sprints which helps deliver tasks on time and troubleshoot at an early stage. Generally, sprints are iterative cycles planned in a way to keep the process concise in order to avoid delays.
Scenario planning involves the micro-level sprints that last for a week or two. It essentially helps improve operational efficiency. In fact, the sprints allow you to adapt to the upcoming changes and improvising the sprint structure.
4. Facilitate Collaborative Dynamics
It’s one thing to have competent employees, but quite another to have them work cohesively to promote healthy team dynamics. Teamwork is the key as it will provide you with the insights needed to keep the activity aligned with your strategic goals.
In cross-functional projects, the collaborative approach allows you to tap into different work perspectives coming from a team of skilled resources. Besides getting work done with greater efficiency, the talent pool is in a better position to diversify their knowledge areas and boosts professional rapport among members. Not to mention, improved collaboration due to the flow of information allows a team to make data-driven decisions and adapt to changes within limited time periods.
5. Visibility of Progress
The visibility of the project’s progress ensures that resources are engaged in high-priority tasks and helps prevent mistakes and wasted effort down the line. Tracking the progress holds much importance when you are following agile principles because your next move depends on the outcomes per sprint!
Misinterpreting project progress can harm the project to the degree that it might become impossible to rectify the mistakes later. Generally, business or project insights help you to identify its health and take needful actions within the permissible time.
The agile methodology suggests the concept of improvising project management planning throughout its lifecycle. Hence, using the agile methodology with other solid methodologies becomes convenient when you follow the iterative solution approach towards the arising challenges.
However, you can also initiate agile project management practice using the five fundamental steps given in this blog to kickstart your project.
While the agile method is highly popular within the IT industry because of the nature of their projects and the need for frequent changes, it has been leveraged in other sectors too, such as high-profile construction and engineering works.
In fact, a project management prediction made by Dr.Harold Kerzner states that implementation of flexible project management framework or iterative approaches will surge in 2020. You can exploit the agile principles to your convenience and get the highest project efficiency. Also, this methodology helps all the businesses differently to improve their project planning and execution.
Additional Resources:
5 Most Used Agile Methodologies & Their Advantages
Traditionalization of Agile Processes- Transforming Culture, Architecture
Why Document Management System Is Essential for an Enterprise
