Agile Project Management: Iterative Life Cycles

• Agile project management is an iterative approach to project delivery throughout its life cycle.

Iterative Agile Life Cycles

• These cycles have incremental steps towards project completion
• They are used in software development to promote velocity and adaptability.
• Benefits include adjusting as you go, not following a linear path.
• Aims to release benefits throughout the process, not just at the end.
• Central values and behaviors include trust, flexibility, empowerment, and collaboration.

Need for Agile Project Management

• Helps teams focus on what matters, bringing flexibility and delivering value with continuous feedback.
• Aims to improve predictability and control risk through an incremental and iterative approach.

Agile Principles

• Focuses on empowered people and their interactions, delivering value early and constantly.
• Delivers maximum value against business priorities within time and budget.
• Breaks requirements into smaller, prioritized pieces.
• Promotes collaborative working, especially with the customer.
• Reflects, learns, and adjusts regularly to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Integrates planning with execution, helping teams respond effectively to changing requirements.

Becoming Agile

• Introducing agile impacts traditional culture and introduces new ways of working.

Agile vs. Waterfall

• Agile emphasizes customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Agile emphasizes individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Agile emphasizes responding to change over following a structured plan.
• Agile emphasizes prototyping and working solutions over comprehensive documentation.

Benefits of Agile Working

• Empowers participants and builds accountability.
• Encourages diversity of ideas and allows early release of benefits.
• Promotes continuous improvement.
• Helps build client and user engagement through incremental and evolutionary changes.
• Allows early testing and rejection of decision ‘gremlins’ through tight feedback loops.

Agile Techniques

• Various iterative or agile techniques can suit any project method.
• Selection of techniques should align with the team, project, and individual preferences.

Agile Terminology

• Agile: Delivering requirements iteratively and incrementally throughout the life cycle.
• Agile development: Iterative software development methodologies like Scrum, Lean, DSDM, and XP.
• Agile Manifesto: Principles include individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.
• Backlog: Prioritized work still to be completed.
• Burndown chart: Monitors progress by showing remaining work versus total time.
• Cadence: Length of a Sprint or release cycle in days or weeks.
• Ceremonies: Meetings, often daily, identify progress, tasks, and barriers.
• DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery): Process-decision framework.
• Daily Scrum: A daily stand-up meeting for planning, execution, and review.
• DevOps (Development/Operations): Bridges the gap between agile teams and operational delivery.
• DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Method): Agile development methodology, now the ‘DSDM project management framework’.
• Kanban: Managing work with an emphasis on just-in-time delivery.
• Kanban board: Visualizes status, progress, and issues related to work.
• Lean: Focuses on eliminating waste and delivering customer value.
• LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum): Agile development method.
• RAD (Rapid Application Development): Builds solutions quickly through direct end-user interaction.
• Requirements: Written as ‘stories’ in a prioritized ‘Backlog’.
• SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework Enterprise): Agile methodology for software development.
• Scaled Agile: Scaling agile to large projects or programs.
• Scrum: Agile methodology with regular team meetings to review Sprint progress.
• Scrum of Scrums: Operates Scrum at scale for multiple teams working on the same product.
• Scrum Master: Oversees development and ensures adherence to agreed ways of working.
• Sprints: Short, time-boxed development phases within a larger project.
• Sprint Retrospective: Reviews a Sprint to promote continuous improvement.
• Stories: See Requirements.
• Timeboxes: See Sprints.
• Velocity: Measure of work completed during a Sprint.
• Waterfall: Sequential project management capturing detailed requirements upfront.
• XP (Extreme Programming): Allows programmers to decide delivery scope.