Agile Project Management: Nuances & Skills

Agile Project Management requires some additional skills to be possessed by an Agile Project Manager. It does not only involve managerial skills but also requires more team-oriented and leadership skills. Agile Development is a value-driven model with focus on outcomes unlike traditional approaches which are plan-driven in nature and based on output. At the same time, the centripetal force for success of the agile-based project is the agile team which executes it. It also requires additional skills in terms of adaptability, self-organization and motivation to continuously improve.

Agile Transformation is a journey and not a process. It is a cultural, behavioral and mindset shift from bureaucratic to pragmatic empiricism. Agile teams improve through learning, inspection and adaption which help in bringing a consistent delivery cadence in shorter and visible iterative development cycles. Support from the leadership team is a must, and the focus of agile project management should be more on the degree of adaptability instead of predictability. Over a period of time when the team starts delivering with consistent velocity, it helps in increasing the confidence in the achievement of customer goals and defined outcomes.