An essay on agile project management practices

The main goals for the current dissertation is to research on how practices and concepts from Agile Project Management can be applied in a non-IT context and to discover which aspects should be considered when deciding if whether an Agile approach should be implemented or not. Previous studies reflect on the adoption for the identified context. However, the recognition of these practices and concepts by the Project Management field of studies still remains unresolved. The adoption of Agile Project Management emerges as a manifestation against traditional approaches, mainly due to their inability of accepting requirements’ changes. Therefore, these practices and concepts can be considered in order to reduce the risks concerning the increase of competition and innovation – which does not apply to the IT sector solely. The current study reviews the literature on Agile Project Management and its adoption across different sectors in order to assess which practices and concepts can be applied on a non-IT context. Nine different methods are reviewed, where two of these show a higher relevance – Scrum and Extreme Programming. The identified practices and concepts can be separated into four different groups: Cultural and Organizational Structures, Process, Practices, and Artefacts. A framework based on the work by Boehm & Turner in 2004 is developed in order to support the decision of adopting agile methods. A survey intended for project managers was carried in order to assess the implementation of the identified practices and concepts and to evaluate which variables have the highest importance on the developed decision support framework. It is concluded that New Product Development is the project type with the highest potential to implement an agile approach and that the Project Final Product’s Innovativeness, Competitiveness, and the Project Member’s Experience and Autonomy are the most important aspects to consider an implementation of an Agile approach.

Agile it project management professional

La gestión de las tecnologías de la información tiene cada vez más importancia dentro de un mundo totalmente digitalizado y donde la capacidad de respuesta al cambio puede marcar el devenir de una compañía, y resulta cada vez más evidente que los modelos de gestión tradicionales utilizados en la mayoría de las compañías no son capaces de dar respuesta por si solos a estas nuevas necesidades. Aun teniendo identificado este área de mejora, son muchas las empresas reacias a abordar estos cambios, principalmente por el cambio rupturista que significa a nivel interno. De cara a facilitar esta transformación, se propone en este documento un modelo de transición controlada donde las grandes compañías puedan incorporar nuevas alternativas y herramientas ágiles de forma paulatina y asegurando que el proceso de cambio es seguro y efectivo. Mediante una modificación del ciclo de vida de proyecto dentro de la compañía, se incorporan en las áreas, equipos o dominios de la empresa que se identifiquen los nuevos modelos de gestión ágil, permitiendo así una transición gradual y controlada, y pudiendo además analizar los detalles sobre todo en etapas tempranas de la transformación. Una vez seleccionada el área o dominio objeto de la transformación, se realiza un análisis a nivel de Portfolio de proyectos, identificando aquellos que cumplen una serie de condiciones que les permiten ser gestionados utilizando modelos de gestión ágil. Para ello, se plantea una matriz de decisión con las principales variables a tener en cuenta a la hora de tomar una decisión. Una vez seleccionado y consensuado con los interesados el modelo de gestión utilizando la matriz de decisión, se plantean una serie de herramientas y métricas asociadas para que la gestión ágil del proyecto dé una visibilidad completa y detallada del estado en cada momento, asegurando un correcto proceso de gestión de proyectos para proveer visibilidad regular del progreso, riesgos, planes de contingencia y problemas, con las alertas y escalaciones adecuadas. Además de proponerse una serie de herramientas y métricas para la gestión ágil del proyecto, se plantean las modificaciones necesarias sobre las tipologías habituales de contrato y se propone un nuevo modelo de contrato: el Contrato Agile. La principal diferencia entre este nuevo modelo de contrato y los habituales es que, al igual que las metodologías ágiles, es ejecutado en segmentos o iteraciones. En definitiva, el objetivo de este documento es proveer un mecanismo que facilite la inclusión de nuevos modelos ágiles de gestión en grandes organizaciones, llevando a cabo una transición controlada, con herramientas y métricas adaptadas para tener visibilidad completa sobre los proyectos en todo momento.---ABSTRACT---The information technology management is every time more important in a totally digitized world, where the capacity to response the change could mark the future of a company, and results every time more evident that the traditional management models used in the most of the companies are not able to respond by themselves to these new necessities. Even having identified this improvement area, many companies are reluctant to address these changes, mainly due to the disruptive change that it means internally in the companies. In order to facilitate this transformation, this document proposed a controlled transition model to help the big companies to incorporate new alternatives and agile tools gradually and ensuring that the change process is safe and effective. Through a modification the project life cycle inside the company, the new agile management models are incorporated in the selected areas, teams or domains, permitting a gradual and controlled transition, and enabling further analyze the details above all in the early phases of the transformation. Once is selected the area or domain object of the transformation, a portfolio level analysis is performed, identifying those projects that meet a some conditions that allow them to be managed using agile management models. For that, a decision matrix is proposed with the principal variables to have into account at the time of decision making. Once the management model is selected using the decision matrix and it is agreed with the different stakeholders, a group of tools and metrics associated with the agile management projects are proposed to provide a regular visibility of the project progress, risks, contingency plans and problems, with proper alerts and escalations. Besides the group of tools and metrics proposed for agile project management, the necessary modifications over the traditional contract models and a new contract model are proposed: the Agile Contract. The main difference between this new contract model and the traditional ones is that, as the agile methodologies, it is executed in segments or iterations. To sum up, the objective of this document is to provide a mechanism that facilitates the inclusion of new agile management models in big companies, with a controlled transition and proposing adapted tools and metrics to have a full visibility over the project in all the phases of the project life cycle.

Application of the scrum framework in non-software project management

Scrum is an agile project management approach that has been widely practiced in the software development projects. It has proven to increase quality, productivity, customer satisfaction, transparency and team morale among other benefits from its implementation. The concept of scrum is based on the concepts of incremental innovation strategies, lean manufacturing, kaizen, iterative development and so on and is usually contrasted with the linear development models such as the waterfall method in the software industry. The traditional approaches to project management such as the waterfall method imply intensive upfront planning and approval of the entire project. These sort of approaches work well in the well-defined stable environments where all the specifications of the project are known in the beginning. However, in the uncertain environments when a project requires continuous development and incorporation of new requirements, they do not tend to work well. The scrum framework was inspiraed by Nonaka’s article about new product developement and was later adopted by software development practitioners. This research explores conditions for and benefits of the application of scrum framework beyond software development projects. There are currently a few case studies on the scrum implementation in non-software projects, but there is a noticeable trend of it in the scrum practitioners’ community. The research is based on the real-life context multiple case study analysis of three different non-software projects. The results of the research showed that in order to succeed within scrum projects need to satisfy certain conditions – necessary and sufficient. Among them the key factors are uncertainty of the project environment, not well defined outcomes, commitment of the scrum teams and management support. The top advantages of scrum implementation identified in the present research include improved transparency, accountability, team morale, communications, cooperation and collaboration. Further researches are advised to be carried out in order to validate these findings on a larger sample and to focus on more specific areas of scrum project management implementation.

A systematic literature review on agile project

In the 21st century, agile project management (APM) has emerged as a major evolutionary step in the area of software project management. APM is defined as a conceptual framework, consisting of various methods such as Scrum, quick respond to change, better customer collaboration, minimum coverage of documentation and extreme programming (XP) that facilitates to produce working software in multiple iterations with team work. Because agile project management has become more popular in the software industry in recent years, it constitutes an interesting and comprehensive research topic. This thesis presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of published research articles concerning agile project management. Based on a predefined search strategy, 273 such articles were identified, of which 44 were included in the review. The selected 44 articles were published between years 2005 and 2012. The thesis defines a review process by developing a review protocol and presenting the results of the review. The results are expected to provide researchers, software man

A practical approach to project management in a very small company

This article shows how a very small company has tailored Scrum according to its own needs. The main additions made were the “sprint design” phase and the “sprint test” phase. Before the sprint 0, the requirements elicitation and the functional specification were made in order to meet deadlines and costs agreed with clients. Besides, the introduction of an agile project management tool has supported all the process and it is considered the main success factor for the institutionalization of the Scrum process.

Project Management Tools in Agile Embedded Systems Development

Agile methods have become increasingly popular in the field of software engineering. While agile methods are now generally considered applicable to software projects of many different kinds, they have not been widely adopted in embedded systems development. This is partly due to the natural constraints that are present in embedded systems development (e.g. hardware–software interdependencies) that challenge the utilization of agile values, principles and practices. The research in agile embedded systems development has been very limited, and this thesis tackles an even less researched theme related to it: the suitability of different project management tools in agile embedded systems development. The thesis covers the basic aspects of many different agile tool types from physical tools, such as task boards and cards, to web-based agile tools that offer all-round solutions for application lifecycle management. In addition to these two extremities, there is also a wide range of lighter agile tools that focus on the core agile practices, such as backlog management. Also other non-agile tools, such as bug trackers, can be used to support agile development, for instance, with plug-ins. To investigate the special tool requirements in agile embedded development, the author observed tool related issues and solutions in a case study involving three different companies operating in the field of embedded systems development. All three companies had a distinct situation in the beginning of the case and thus the tool solutions varied from a backlog spreadsheet built from scratch to plug-in development for an already existing agile software tool. Detailed reports are presented of all three tool cases. Based on the knowledge gathered from agile tools and the case study experiences, it is concluded that there are tool related issues in the pilot phase, such as backlog management and user motivation. These can be overcome in various ways epending on the type of a team in question. Finally, five principles are formed to give guidelines for tool selection and usage in agile embedded systems development.

Agile Game: A Project Management Game for Agile Methods

Since mid-1990s, companies have adopted agile methods and incorporated them in their development methodologies. For this reason, future project managers and developers need to have a full understanding of these methods. At present, the university’s approach to agile methods is theoretical and is not reflected during the development of a product and their practical use. The purpose of this project is the creation of a software system in the form of a game, named Agile Game, which simulates their use. The system is designed for use as supplementary material in lectures, to help students understand agile methods, to present their use within a project, and to demonstrate how they differ from traditional project management methodologies. The final system, which is web based, was implemented using PHP, MySQL and JavaScript. It was fully tested against the requirements and evaluated by peer students. The evaluation showed that the majority of users were satisfied with the system but they thought that it should contain more detailed information at every step of the game. For this reason, some parts of the design and the content were reviewed to meet user requirements.

Standardization of project management processes

Software development is a discipline that is almost as old as the history of computers. With the advent of the Internet and all of its related technologies, software development has been on high demand. But, and especially in SME (small and medium enterprise), this was not accompanied with a comparable effort to develop a set of sustainable and standardized activities of project management, which lead to increasing inefficiencies and costs. Given the actual economic situation, it makes sense to engage in an effort to reduce said inefficiencies and rising costs. For that end, this work will analyze the current state of software development’s project management processes on a Portuguese SME, along with its problems and inefficiencies in an effort to create a standardized model to manage software development, with special attention given to critical success factors in an agile software development environment, while using the best practices in process modeling. This work also aims to create guidelines to correctly integrate these changes in the existing IS structure of a company.

Product Development Management. Experiment for New Type of Project Management.

Tuotekehityksestä ja sen johtamisesta on tullut erittäin tärkeä osa tietoliikenneteollisuutta. Jatkuva teknologinen kehitys ja lyhentyneet tuotteiden elinkaaret ovat saaneet yritykset panostamaan tuotekehitysprosesseihin ja johtamiseen. Erityisesti nopeatempoiset ja lyhytkestoiset projektit onkin koettu ongelmallisiksi. Diplomityön tavoitteena oli tutkia teoriassa uusien tuotteiden tuotekehitystä, tuotekehitysprosesseja sekä projektijohtamista. Käytännön osuudessa oli tavoitteena kehittää kokeellinen tuotekehitysmalli nopeatempoisten ja lyhytkestoisten tuotekehitysprojektien tarpeisiin muuttuvissa ja epävarmoissa olosuhteissa. Tavoitteena oli myös käyttää ja analysoida kehitettyä kokeellista tuotekehitysmallia lyhytkestoisen tuotekehitysprojektin yhteydessä. Työn tuloksena saatiin ohjelmistotuote vaadituilla ominaisuuksilla vaaditussa ajassa ja todettiin projektissa käytetyn kokeellisen tuotekehitysmallin osoittautuneen toimivaksi. Jatkotutkimuksia tarvitaan selvittämään mallin sopivuutta ja sen kehityskohteita erilaisten tuotekehitysprojektien kohdalla.

Come le startup selezionano i software di project management?

Il presente lavoro di tesi punta a cercare di capire quali funzionalità, le startup del settore IT ritengono più utili all’interno dei software di project management. L’approccio per rispondere alla domanda sarà quello di intervistare startup presenti in diversi incubatori italiani ed elaborare i dati raccolti. Le aziende dovranno essere operanti nel settore informatico ed avere massimo 7 anni. Nel primo periodo di ricerca ho analizzato le funzionalità descritte nella letteratura scientifica e ho trovato che quanto presente non fosse compatibile con le attuali necessità e caratteristiche delle startup. Per avvalorare quanto affermo, sottoporrò un questionario alle startup compatibili con i requisiti, in cui valuterò se concordano o smentiscono ciò che dichiaro. L’intervista sarà rivolta ai project manager delle aziende, verrà loro sottoposto un questionario online in cui dovranno esprimere una preferenza tra 2 elenchi di funzionalità e indicare qual è maggiormente compatibile con le loro esigenze. In base alla scelta che effettueranno gli verrà domandato quali funzionalità tra quelle elencate ritengono più utili per i loro bisogni aziendali. Al termine della ricerca verranno elaborate le informazioni osservando se hanno trovato più utile il nuovo elenco di funzionalità e quali funzionalità sono considerate maggiormente necessarie a soddisfare le esigenze aziendali.

Evaluating an Agile Method for Planning and Controlling Innovative Projects

This article presents an extensive investigation carried out in two technology-based companies of the So Carlos technological pole in Brazil. Based on this multiple case study and literature review, a method, entitled hereafter IVPM2, applying agile project management (APM) principles was developed. After the method implementation, a qualitative evaluation was carried out by a document analysis and questionnaire application. This article shows that the application of this method at the companies under investigation evidenced the benefits of using simple, iterative, visual, and agile techniques to plan and control innovative product projects combined with traditional project management best practices, such as standardization.

And then came Complex Project Management

The subject of management is renowned for its addiction to fads and fashions. Project Management is no exception. The issue of interest for this paper is the establishment of the 'College of Complex Project Managers' and their 'competency standard for complex project managers.' Both have generated significant interest in the Project Management community, and like any other human endeavour they should be subject to critical evaluation. The results of this evaluation show significant flaws in the definition of complex in this case, the process by which the College and its standard have emerged, and the content of the standard. However, there is a significant case for a portfolio of research that extends the existing bodies of knowledge into large-scale complicated (or major) projects that would be owned by the relevant practitioner communities, rather than focused on one organization. Research questions are proposed that would commence this stream of activity towards an intelligent synthesis of what is required to manage in both complicated and truly complex environments.

Project management: evaluation of the problems in the portuguese construction industry

During recent decades it has been possible to identify several problems in construction industry project management, related with to systematic failures in terms of fulfilling its schedule, cost and quality targets, which highlight a need for an evaluation of the factors that may cause these failures. Therefore, it is important to understand how project managers plan the projects, so that the performance and the results can be improved. However, it is important to understand if other areas beyond cost and time management that are mentioned on several studies as the most critical areas, receive the necessary attention from construction project managers. Despite the cost and time are the most sensitive areas/fields, there are several other factors that may lead to project failure. This study aims at understand the reasons that may cause the deviation in terms of cost, time and quality, from the project management point of view, looking at the knowledge areas mentioned by PMI (Project Management Institute).

The importance of risk assessment in the context of investment project management: a case study

Risk management is an important component of project management. Nevertheless, such process begins with risk assessment and evaluation. In this research project, a detailed analysis of the methodologies used to treat risks in investment projects adopted by the Banco da Amazonia S.A. was made. Investment projects submitted to the FNO (Constitutional Fund for Financing the North) during 2011 and 2012 were considered for that purpose. It was found that the evaluators of this credit institution use multiple indicators for risk assessment which assume a central role in terms of decision-making and contribute for the approval or the rejection of the submitted projects; namely, the proven ability to pay, the financial records of project promotors, several financial restrictions, level of equity, level of financial indebtedness, evidence of the existence of a consumer market, the proven experience of the partners/owners in the business, environmental aspects, etc. Furthermore, the bank has technological systems to support the risk assessment process, an internal communication system and a unique system for the management of operational risk.

Project management under uncertainty: a study on solution methods

Project Management involves onetime endeavors that demand for getting it right the first time. On the other hand, project scheduling, being one of the most modeled project management process stages, still faces a wide gap from theory to practice. Demanding computational models and their consequent call for simplification, divert the implementation of such models in project management tools from the actual day to day project management process. Special focus is being made to the robustness of the generated project schedules facing the omnipresence of uncertainty. An "easy" way out is to add, more or less cleverly calculated, time buffers that always result in project duration increase and correspondingly, in cost. A better approach to deal with uncertainty seems to be to explore slack that might be present in a given project schedule, a fortiori when a non-optimal schedule is used. The combination of such approach to recent advances in modeling resource allocation and scheduling techniques to cope with the increasing flexibility in resources, as can be expressed in "Flexible Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem" (FRCPSP) formulations, should be a promising line of research to generate more adequate project management tools. In reality, this approach has been frequently used, by project managers in an ad-hoc way.