LEAN and AGILE METHODOLOGIES: OVERVIEW: AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Management is About Reality and Results

Today’s Information Technology (IT) manager is under ever-increasing pressure to deliver results in the form of applications that drive improvements to the bottom line, even as management slashes IT budgets. Business environments continue to change at a rapid pace, and many IT shops struggle to keep up. Because change can't (and shouldn't) be eliminated in the development process, driving down the cost of responding to it is our strategy. Our agile software development methodology employs eXtreme Programming (XP) to reduce the cost of change with rapid iterative delivery, flexibility, and a focus on working code.

Based on our XP project experience, we evolved an Agile Project Management (APM) framework to adaptively steer projects while effectively managing expectations and risks. At CC Pace, we know that project management isn’t just about organization: APM allows managers to combine business vision, communication skills, soft management skills and technical savvy with the ability to plan, coordinate, and execute. It uses the latest, most effective streamlined tools to define success for your project at the start and helps you to achieve it at the end. All through, APM maintains a focus on business results by keeping your business stakeholders engaged and informed.

Management is about Leading People

APM adopts the leadership-and-collaboration model over traditional command-and-control. It considers all members skilled and valuable stakeholders in team management, and therefore relies on the collective ability of autonomous teams as the basic problem solving mechanism. It avoids analysis-paralysis by limiting up-front planning to a minimum, and instead, stresses adaptability to changing conditions.

APM’s core practices are:

• Guiding Vision. Ensure a shared guiding vision for all team members.
• Small, Organic Teams. Enable interaction and adaptation through close relationships on small, organic teams.
• Light Touch. Apply control intelligently to foster emergent order.
• Simple Rules. Establish simple rules as a basis for complex behavior.
• Open Information. Provide free and open access to information.
• Agile Vigilance. Use systems thinking to monitor projects and continuously adapt to change.

Used with supporting tools, they provide your organization with an intrinsic ability to manage and adapt to change.