Many organizations are pursuing various agility initiatives to improve their delivery capability. In line with those trends, the concept of “Agile Project Management” has also taken root in the industry as a strategy to pursue organizational excellence. This podcast episode reviews the concept of Agile project management and contrasts it with traditional project management.



What is Agile Project Management?

In this podcast we will review the concepts of Agile Project Management and how it’s different from traditional Project Management. Agile project management is about managing project delivery in an agile world. As agility practices differ from traditional modes of delivery, an organization’s PM culture requires a transition from the traditional waterfall approach of managing projects to the agile mode of working.

Most organizations now have adopted some form of agile practices. This includes adopting agile software development methodologies such as Scrum, XP, Kanban, Crystal, and others. In other cases, many organizations are also adopting agile practices external to IT and on the business side of the organization. So, although the maturity of organizations in the use of agile practices varies greatly from one organization to another, the challenge for those who have taken the plunge in the agile world, usually has to do with transitioning from the traditional ways of thinking and doing to the new paradigm. This sometimes is easier said than done because the transition involves an uphill journey not just in terms of adopting new agile related processes and practices but also due to a cultural and mindset shift from the traditional ways of doing things. The transition also involves redefining a number of roles and responsibilities and training staff in those roles.

In the remaining podcast, we will look at three questions. What are the characteristics of Agile Projects that make them different from traditional approaches? What is the role of the “Agile Project Manager”? And finally, are traditional methodologies such as PMBOK still relevant in the new agile world.

So, let’s get started.



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Characteristics of Agile

To understand agile project management, we should first revisit some of the principles that makes agile different than the waterfall approach. This is important to understand because the Agile Project Manager needs to ensure that the project that’s supposedly done in an agile manner is delivering up to its promise. This in fact is one of the most important responsibilities of the new Agile PM.

So, agility (in product development) is about the following:



* Agility is about iterative development – Rather than focusing to tackle a large scope, agility calls for smaller and iterative development.

* Agility is about speedy and accelerated delivery – The iterative mode of developing products that have a much smaller and defined scope results in a faster delivery cycle to the market.

* Agility is about embracing constant changes – Agile is about expecting and embracing change even when the change is introduced toward the end of development lifecycles of certain iterations. A PM, therefore, should constantly have a mechanism to expect change,