Extreme Project Management > Agile Process & Product Development

Despite this global recession, the competitive landscape keeps becoming more urgent and faster paced. You will be expected to keep managing new projects to keep your organization competitive--but will do so with less (and exhausted) resources, tight budgets and more scrutiny for success. How does one meet such challenges and succeed? One of the agile practices tailor made for such an environment is the Lean method.

QA in an Agile environment is very different…are your teams ready? Here we look at how QA needs to evolve in order to best support Agile development practices.

This will be the first in a series of articles that will look to provide the background of issues involved with managing an agile software development project under a traditionally linear and sequential project procurement process. Software development has been deliberately chosen for the example industry since that’s the domain for which agile is most typically used, but for those using agile in other industry domains, the general issues and proposed solution should work equally well within your industry.

A new agile procurement process--one that can operate in conjunction with and alongside an agile software development methodology--should significantly improve both the procurement of software vendor’s services and and successful delivery of software projects. This article will explore the underlying principles as well as map the reconciliation points required to harmonize agile development and procurement methods.

Adult children. Jumbo shrimp. Seriously funny. I’m sure you recognize these expressions as oxymorons — self-contradictory phrases, often with an ironic meaning. Should we add “agile requirements” to the list? Does agile development fit in with traditional requirements practices? And if so, how?

Ever stop to ponder all the different PM frameworks that have been developed over the years and which one you should be using in your organization? Is there really one best framework out there? The options are dizzying, so here we take a look at four of them in depth. What can they do for you? Remember, one size does not fit all...

Does the use of agile project management require new contract models in order to be successful? Can agile project management be used with traditional fixed-price contracts? Does agile project management require a new type of contract (and if so, what kinds)? Furthermore, wouldn’t a new type of contract discourage the use of agile PM?

Agile adoption outside of software is nothing new--it dates back very close to the origin of today’s agile methods, predating the term “agile”. However, what is new and noteworthy is the rate and scale of non-software agile adoption being witnessed today. Now--as more companies than ever are exposed to agile methods in their IT practices--these methods are being employed beyond the regular IT domain.

Agile practices are not intrinsically “value-adding” — they must be aligned to business needs and goals in order to provide true value. By measuring their agility based on compliance with a particular method, organizations may prevent their teams from adapting practices to suit projects with different characteristics and needs.

Just being an expert on agile and focusing on delivery of “working software” doesn’t necessarily guarantee success. This article shows tips and techniques for those of you struggling with getting your team and your company to adopt agile.

As a manger or coach, if you don’t change a pacesetter’s behavior you run a high risk of being held hostage by one person’s abilities--and pay a cost in team productivity. This article is about a pacesetter as a team member on an agile software development team. We will explain what a pacesetter is, why it’s a problem and the effect that a pacesetter has on agile software development.

CollabNet updates its TeamForge platform and ScrumWorks project management application, focusing on scaling agile to the enterprise through flexible reporting, ease of use and other enhancements.

At the heart of agile methods is the key tenet that teams and teamwork are better than individual contributions and effort. Here we explore the key factors and attributes of teams and teamwork for agile project management.

As businesses enter the "new normal" era of economic uncertainty, program and portfolio management offices that remain tactically and administratively-focused will struggle. Successful PMOs in 2012 will move towards a strageic, holistic view that embraces agile methods and increases visibility for executives.

There’s plenty of pressure to try to finish projects faster. Sometimes that pressure comes from outside the team, from our managers. When it does, the team can succumb to two common agile schedule games: “Double Your Velocity” and “Everyone Start Your Own Story.” If you face these games, you do have options before they destroy your project.

Agile vendors have done a good job providing project managers and product owners with planning and tracking tools. But the primary creators of project deliverables are software developers, and they have consistently been an afterthought. To scale across the enterprise, Agile work processes must embrace the individual contributors doing the actual work.

Product development requires a unified, collaborative team effort. A social project management framework, combined with the right social tools, helps to connect team activities to the product development process and stakeholders. The benefits include increased visibility, more accurate estimates, responsive, real-time analysis and streamlined workflows.

What are hyper-productive teams doing differently to achieve such extraordinary results? This article introduces you to the key practices used by Scrum teams around the world to achieve hyper-productive results--practices your team can apply right now.

How can you adapt Scrum-like tools and techniques within a Waterfall project management environment? What can you do to reduce resistance and reap the benefits Scrum has to offer? In short, how can you get down and Scrummy within a Waterfall world? Here are some ideas you might find useful.

An agile methodology can help bring about intrinsic changes in an organization--especially when an organization figures out the right “flavor” of agile that works best for them. Here are few things that an agile project can foster.

The first step in scaling agile is to move from partial methods to a full-fledged, disciplined delivery process. The second step is to understand eight scaling factors and determine which are applicable to the range of complexities your project teams face. Here, agile thought leader Scott Ambler presents his scaling model.

Agile and earned value are inherently different approaches to managing projects, but they can complement each other in support of flexibility and bottom-line value. Here are three practical tips to help you bridge the gap between an agile approach and the earned value reports and measurements many organizations require.

Part 1 of this two-part series introduces the agile engineering principles and practices that, when implemented, enable some teams and their respective organizations to build high-quality software very quickly that will please customers. Organizations embracing these practices--when used in conjunction with agile and lean management practices--can gain delivery advantages on their competitors while managing lower maintenance and support costs in the long term.

Agile projects are optimized for different constraints than traditional ones. To truly understand how to design a performance measurement system for agile PM, we need to dig a little deeper into the value system underlying agile methods.

To achieve a Zen culture of Scrum will take time, resources and a radical paradigm shift. Is it worth it? Yes, because this practice places humans--not processes or techniques--at the center of an organization. Let's learn more about a valuable history.

Using product quality to deliver business value in agile development is vital. This article provides a how-to for progressive change agents interested in delivering products that generate measurable business value for their customers and stakeholders. You’ll learn how product qualities differ from functions, how to identify the right ones, measure them and use improvements to drive business results.

Anxiety and strain on the job is normal, but in the process of using Scrum it is common to find product development groups and senior management going head to head. Here we look at some keys to its successful implementation.

Some love 'em. Some loathe 'em. But these frameworks and schools of PM thought are here to stay. What benefits and challenges do they present? Read on for both sides of the alternative equation...

An anniversary event in Utah celebrates the Agile Manifesto, gathering five of the original authors and others to address future industry challenges.

A rocket won’t overcome gravity's pull without the right trajectory and energy. Likewise, a project needs systems in place at launch to have a chance of soaring. In this excerpt, we set the stage for a successful liftoff, which requires a shared understanding of team roles and objectives. An agile chartering framework can help.

As Agile evolves beyond software development, its people-centric mandate is a natural ally to the social technology revolution transforming today’s enterprises. Here, a leading strategist in the social business landscape shares his thoughts on the interplay of these two movements, including how Kanban and DevOps fit.

Most attempts to adopt Scrum in large organizations do not result in durable, ongoing transformation. Obstacles to Scrum adoption are usually obstacles to business success in general, and established organizations are usually reluctant to let go of them. Here we look at seven obstacles to enterprise agility, where bad thinking is half the problem.

Even if your current IT organization hasn’t adopted agile software development, your project team can still benefit from these agile project management best practices.

Does your PMO Produce Multiple Obstacles for your project or Promote Many Opportunities for success? PMOs often get a bad reputation on agile teams, but it need not be that way--they can also add tremendous support and be a great help.

Some managers are not accustomed to the management transparency that agile requires--it can push managers past their comfort zone. When that happens, the product and the project team’s process is at risk. Who better to fight for the team than an agile project manager?

There is lots of great information available on how to use agile methods for custom software development projects, but less so for package implementations. Commercial-Off-The-Shelf solutions make up a large percentage of the IT projects undertaken by companies each year, and many organizations are missing out on benefits that an agile package approach can bring.

Managers can play an even more valuable role in organizations as teams become self-organizing and take on more responsibility. But if managers want teams to take more self-responsibility, they need to shift their focus from monitoring the day-to-day work of individuals and let teams grow up. Here are three common areas of confusion as managers and teams negotiate their new relationships.

While attending a recent course, this writer learned some simple techniques for better defining the customer and their desires. This article introduces some of the techniques that will help ensure teams know who their customers and users are, who they are not and how to create winning solutions for delivering value.

Agile methods are powerful approaches that bring many benefits to how we undertake project work. However, they are not immune to misuse or failure. The following list of five common pitfalls is often seen in organizations switching to agile.

Especially in agile programs, the program architect and the program manager work together to provide business value to the organization. It’s difficult, intense and fun...and full of some myths that need clearing up.

Agile methods deliver many benefits in terms of their flexibility to cope with changing requirements and priorities. However, this adaptability and reluctance to be tied down on scope can create contract problems when trying to form supplier agreements or outsource work. Part 1 of our two-part series covers the challenges of agile contracting and offers some of the packaged solutions created so far.

Gartner’s new report on the state of the PPM market evaluates 30 technology providers and identifies important trends, including the infiltration of the SaaS deployment model and increasing support of Agile.

While requirements discovery and analysis is a critical best practice for application development, requirements and Agile methods have rarely meshed. In a new book, Dean Leffingwell shows how to leverage the benefits of Agile without sacrificing the value of effective requirements.

An event celebrating the 10-year-anniversary of the Agile Manifesto brought together 33 members of the agile community and sparked discussion about what agile has solved, what is unsolvable and what remains to be solved. Here, we talk to attendee Ryan Martens, CTO of Rally, about some of his and the group’s conclusions.

There’s going to be a lot more talk about Agile now that the Project Management Institute has introduced a new certification program for Agile Project Practitioners. Let’s clear up some initial confusion and look at what Agile is and is not, and why you should care.

International Institute of Business Analysis and Agile Alliance seek feedback from users of new Agile Extension to BABOK Guide.

In the PM world, much is being made about the concepts of agile and extreme project management. But how agile is agile? And how agile do we need to be, anyway? And, to be clear about the real question that we should be asking, how unique is agile from what most of us understand project management to be?

As agile methods continue to gain in popularity and Project Management Institute events offer more and more agile content, the demand for agile-related offerings has increased substantially. Is this new certification offering a good idea, and what does it mean for you?

Three-day event in Boston will explore how serious play, collaboration and experiential learning apply to the field of agile software development and project management.