Agile Project Management

Question: Discus about the Agile Project Management. Answer: Introduction: Agile project management is an iterative, incremental method of managing the design and build activities of Information Technology. This is used mainly for the designing of websites and other IT related tasks. Agile Project Management reduces complexity by breaking down the many-months-long cycle of building requirements for the whole project, building the entire product and then testing to find hundreds of product flaws (Dyb, Dingsyr and Moe 2014). Small, usable segments of the software product are specified, developed and tested in manageable, two- to four-week cycles Benefits of Agile Project Management Improved Product Quality Agile methods can be successfully implemented for making a safeguard against poor quality products (pundak 2014). Following are the advantages: Proactive approach to quality to prevent product problems Technological excellence, good design, and sustainable development Relevant knowledge of product features Continuous integration and daily testing into the development process Automated testing tools Sprint retrospectives Developed, tested, integrated, and documented High Customer Satisfaction Agile methods can be used to satisfy the customers by the following benefits (Schwalbe 2015): Keeping customers involved and engaged throughout projects Having a product owner who is an expert on product requirements and customer needs Keeping the product backlog updated and prioritized in order to respond quickly to change Demonstrating working functionality to customers in every sprint review Delivering products to market quicker and more often with every release Possessing the potential for self-funding projects Higher Team Morale Agile techniques allows users to be more creative and innovative. The development team can use this for learning new skills without the challenge of external interference (Conforto et al. 2014). This helps to grow the team morale more and more. Increased Collaboration and Ownership Agile project management techniques increases collaboration between the development team members. Daily scrum meetings let the development team organize around work completed, future work, and roadblocks (Kerzner 2013). During sprint reviews the development team can demonstrate and discuss the product directly with stakeholders. Customized Team Structures Due to the limited size of development teams around five to nine people agile projects can have multiple scrum teams on one project (Layton 2012).For this purpose, team structures are customizers to meet the needs of the project. This helps in the development of the developers as well. Relevant Metrics - The metrics agile project teams use to estimate time and cost, measure project performance, and make project decisions are often more relevant and more accurate than metrics on traditional projects (Kerzner 2013). Metrics are provided by the following methods: Determining project timelines and budgets based on each development teams actual performance and capabilities Having the development team that will be doing the work provide effort estimates for project requirements Using relative estimates, rather than hours or days, to tailor estimated effort to an individual development teams knowledge and capabilities Refining estimated effort, time, and cost on a regular basis, as the development team learns more about the project Updating the sprint burn down chart every day to provide accurate metrics about how the development team is performing within each sprint (Layton 2012) Comparing the cost of future development with the value of that future development, which helps project teams determine when to end a project and redeploy capital to a new project Other benefits of Agile Project Management include: Improved Performance Visibility Increased Project Control Improved Project Predictability Reduced Risk Conclusion Agile project management is a very important technique in the field of software development and information technology. Huge number of benefits are obtained and hence, this technique should be adopted by all the IT firms and development companies. This technique also helps in the personal development of the developers and other involved personnel. References Conforto, E.C., Salum, F., Amaral, D.C., da Silva, S.L. and de Almeida, L.F.M., 2014. Can agile project management be adopted by industries other than software development?.Project Management Journal,45(3), pp.21-34. Dyb, T., Dingsyr, T. and Moe, N.B., 2014. Agile Project Management. InSoftware Project Management in a Changing World(pp. 277-300). Springer Berlin Heidelberg. Fernandes, M.C., Alencar, A.J., Schmitz, E.A., da Silva, M.F. and Stefaneas, P.S., Evaluation of Agile Software Projects in the Public Sector: A Literature Review. Frankov, P., Drahoov, M. and Balco, P., 2016. Agile Project Management Approach and its Use in Big Data Management.Procedia Computer Science,83, pp.576-583. Hoda, R. and Murugesan, L.K., 2016. 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