What is Agile Project Methodology?

What is this agile project management and how does it matters in IT industry? In this blog, I am going to throw some light on Agile Project Management. This blog is s about Agile Project Management, which is a set of simple practices, which can easily be understood by development teams and enable them to concentrate on the most important aspect of the project, "delivery of the product to the users". As we all know business continue to change at a rapid pace and in this entire process, we have always been in the midst of a chaotic business environment.

Today, every big and small organization relies on software, to be competitive and be successful. Well, it’s good news for technology / software professionals, but one should also note that today customers want the projects to be delivered as promised, on time and meeting or exceeding the quality expectations. In order to deliver any project well, as a project manager, you need to have a methodology or a process in place. According to Merriam Webster, a methodology is a body of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline: a particular procedure or set of procedures.

Many organizations have been employing traditional development methodologies like Waterfall, Capability Maturity Model and others. However, in most of the cases it has been found these methodologies have not been able to deliver results in a typical short-cycle project. This is because, in most of the cases either they were predictive or they impose a disciplined & repeatable process, to increase predictability.

So, what type of methodology would help you and your team to deliver the product and satisfy the customers?

The methodology should be simple. The chosen methodology must be simple enough to enable the smart people to concentrate on business and technology and deliver products at a high speed. A methodology should be as simple as possible to get the job done. . One methodology that meets all these features is Agile Methodology. This methodology has helped many leading and mid-sized companies deliver results in complex project areas.

Agile places a lot of emphasis on teamwork. Customers & developers are on the same team. So, customers are always available to the developers for feature prioritization or product feedback. Simplicity is another essential component of Agile project. Simplicity provides a real value in high change situations. The team employs simple approaches in design and coding. It is very much people-oriented and empowers the developers. It is very suitable for a typical current day short-cycle project.

Kindly give your feedback, once you go through my blogs...you suggestions are always welcomed.

Why Projects Fails?

In this world every project is planned and meant to get completed right on time and within the predefined budget. But reality presents a totally different story. It's not uncommon for projects to fail. Today, even if budget and schedules are met, one must ask "did the project deliver the results and quality we expected?” True project success must be evaluated on three components i.e. time, quality and cost, otherwise a project could be considered a failure.

When projects begin to demonstrate signs of failure, everyone looks to the project manager for answers. It may seem inequitable that the burden of doom falls upon a single individual, but being a project manager, he or she must be able to recognize and deal with these types of situations. It is essential for project managers to have a better perceptive of the enterprise's business objectives so that they can continually measure their projects in terms of delivering these business objectives.

These days, business requirements change frequently and so it has become vital for project manager to be fully aware of the issues at a business level. Even a project that delivers the planned scope within time and cost may be deemed unsuccessful because its deliverables are no longer relevant to the business. the question is why project fails? Have you ever wondered why some projects go smoothly and others seem plagued with problems?

There are many reasons why projects (both simple and complex) fail; the number of reasons can be infinite. Some projects do not meet the strategic vision of the company. If business needs are not clearly defined, it will result in a project that does not add value to the bottom line or enhance business processes. Apart from this, some projects also fail due to in-complete project scope and unclear definition of the project's benefits. Moreover, inadequate funding, and incorrect budgeting is still a main cause for projects not delivering their objectives within the quality framework.

In addition to this, the lack of enforcement of policy and procedures also cause a project failure. Even though a policy has been established, it is not enforced. As a result, inconsistent results emerge. If a standard and consistent approach to project management is devised by a company, it must be routinely policed in order to assure accuracy and uniform results. It is one thing to enact legislation, quite another to enforce it.

Even with the best of intentions or solid plans, project can go awry if they are not managed properly. Thus it's the project manager's responsibility to correct the listing no one else. During the course of managing a project, the project manager must monitor activities (and distractions) from many sources and directions.