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Managing Agile Projects - Oct 2006
 What does it take to manage an Agile project - let alone a globally distributed Agile project? Developers approach Agile processes with ease, yet many IT managers struggle with the transition. Each week, I read the wealth of experiences shared on industry online groups and blogs and discuss the challenges with Agile teams. It's clear that many companies have succeeded with Agile development and are now looking to expand Agile concepts to their management practices. This month's Agile Journal looks at the issues of planning, organization, facilitation, role definition, and general best practices for managing Agile development.
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Managing Agile Projects, How Hard Can It Be?
When projects fail, regardless of the methodology, project management gets the blame. Developers can write great code, QA staff can find bugs (albeit some more quickly than others), and subsequent iterations can address any gaps or misinterpretations of customer requirements. But since the project managers are visible to the business staff and have overall responsibility for delivering the project, they take the heat. Even though Agile projects emphasize self-organizing teams and tight IT/customer collaboration, they're not immune. Organizations must learn how to manage Agile projects - a pretty big challenge since most do a lousy job of managing more traditional IT projects!
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Most Software Development Metrics Are Misleading And Counterproductive
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted" - Albert Einstein
The software development industry has a poor track record for developing and employing effective software metrics. This is because most of the metrics selected are tangential to the true goal of software development - delivering business value - and instead focus on software attributes and accounting measures.
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How Agile Development Is Changing The Role Of Project Managers, Business Analysts, And Testers
On a recent engagement, my company walked into an organization that was struggling to adopt agile software development practices. There was clearly energy and willingness on the part of the development team to try new practices. However, the confusion around new responsibilities of the project manager (PM), business analyst (BA), and quality assurance tester (QA) was preventing progress. While the developers and architects were being challenged to adopt some different practices, the main responsibilities of their "roles" remained the same - to design, code, and unit test. In contrast, the responsibilities of the PM, BA, and QA were undergoing change that was in conflict with the organization's traditional expectations. The training, skill development, and management structure were not aligned to the new demands of supporting an agile development process.
This article discusses how the roles of PM, BA, and QA change with agile development, and the implications that shift has for people and organizations.
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 | Agile Offshore Development: 10 Ways to Make it Work for Your Organization
Is Agile offshore development an oxymoron or is it the best of both worlds? In principle, this software development approach seems best suited for teams that work in close proximity to each other - those that have grown accustomed to relying on real-time "hallway conversations" to move project plans along to the next phase. However, in practice, many pioneering companies have discovered Agile offshore development is a powerful marriage of rapid, iterative processes and highly talented mult...
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 | Managing Process Facilitators
The term "Process Facilitator" refers to the people in your organization whose primary responsibility lies in improving the effectiveness of the work that the teams are doing.[1] This responsibility is mainly around the process the teams are using, but also encompasses less tangible aspects of work such as team development, organizational culture change, administrative and technical tools, and working with other Process Facilitators both inside and outside of your organization. Since the role of...
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 | Managing Offshore XP Teams: Organizational Models and Tools
The essence of Extreme Programming (XP) is making the customer a part of the team who works very closely with the developers, ideally communicating on a daily basis. However, what about a situation where your development team is offshore? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds, realizing the gains of offshoring without losing the benefits of XP? How do you keep the momentum and the communication flow going, at the same time ensuring seamless integration of the deliverables into the custo...
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 | So You've Decided To "Go Agile" - A Pragmatic Approach To Onboarding Agile Project Management
Taking an Agile approach to software development for the first time is no small task: there are a number of different practices to onboard and process change is disruptive, frustrating and potentially demoralizing. How do you onboard Agile practices and still meet delivery requirements? To what extent can these be introduced, especially the first time around, so that they stick?
There are two things to balance when introducing new practices: adopt at a pace that doesn't push too f...
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 | CASE STUDY: Betting On Agile
Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. is the world's leading gaming entertainment company, currently poised for continued expansion and growth. Its Enterprise IT team is also poised for continued success by virtue of an aggressive foray into Agile software development methods. Harrah's IT desires to provide an Agile alternative to traditional waterfall projects where it makes sense based on predetermined criteria.
This article describes the challenges in managing Harrah'...
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 | FEATURED BOOK: Managing Agile Projects by Sanjiv Augustine
In his book Managing Agile Projects, Sanjiv Augustine defines Agile Project Management (APM) as "... the work of energizing, empowering, and enabling project teams to rapidly and reliably deliver business value by engaging customers and continuously learning and adapting to their changing needs and environments." This is a mouthful, but hits on two of the most important concepts that Agile teams must learn: to empower teams and to deliver business value. To do so, Augustine proposes ...
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- August 13 - Quality Agile Development
- September 10 - Agile News
- October 08 - Valuable Agile Practices
- November 12 - Introducing Agile to the Organization
- December 10 - The State of the Agile Community
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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