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Agile Project Management Welcome to Agile Project Management.net

Agile project management is an approach to software development that helps teams react to the instability of that process through incremental, iterative work cycles, called sprints. But prior to examining agile project management in specific terms, let’s back up and consider the dominant project management paradigm that preceded it: waterfall, or traditional sequential development.

Agile project management is not an extension of waterfall, but a reaction to it and couldn’t have existed without waterfall. In 1970, Dr. Winston Royce presented “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems,” a paper that introduced waterfall to the project management community. Royce stated that building software could be done with an assembly line approach, much like car manufacturing, in which each piece can be added in sequence without revisiting previous phases.

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Recent News

Agile Dogma

One of the biggest criticisms against Scrum and agile evangelists is that their all-or-nothing attitude undermines the very improvements Scrum and agile promise. Of course, those of us who do practice by-the-book Scrum and agile understand why it’s so important to hold fast to those principles and processes: because they’re the key to unlocking increased productivity, accelerated cycle time, and reduced overall costs. But in his article “Agile Development: Dogma Vs. Degree,” which recently appeared in the online edition of SD Times, David Rubinstein makes an important distinction that often gets lost in the midst of so much evangelist noise. He writes:

“On one side of the argument are those who believe that adopting any of the steps is a move toward agility; that the important thing is not adherence to the steps but instead an improvement in the organization’s software development.”

What I think is important in this quote is Rubinstein’s articulation that the end goal of adopting agile or Scrum is measurable improvement within the organization, not perfectly complying with every aspect of the methodology’s processes. Again, the “rules” of Scrum and agile are there for a reason: They give teams guiderails to lean on during the difficult process of wide-spread organizational change. But an organization does not win if it adopts every aspect of an agile method. They win when they realize change within the organization and begin to work in ways that lets them do things they never could before.

One note: I found it interesting that Rubinstein decided to interview a representative from every major agile tool vendor except the one that we use! In case you’ve missed it in previous posts, we use Danube’s ScrumWorks Pro to manage our projects and it’s really great—mostly for being so easy to use and aligned with the Scrum framework. If you’re using Scrum and find yourself in the market for a tool, you should definitely look into this one.

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Agile Project Management Software

When agile project management techniques were first developed, they were created with small, collocated teams in mind. But in today's global economy, it's increasingly common for development teams to be spread across multiple locations. Often this means that members of a team work in different time zones or continents, but, even when teams are only spread out over several floors of a single office building, some of manual agile's benefits are compromised. Agile project management software, however, can help overcome geographically dispersed teams and bring them together for high-impact collaboration.

Agile Project Management Training

Agile project management is so different from traditional management practices that it's often helpful for teams to attend agile training. Many vendors offer agile training through regularly scheduled courses, held in cities worldwide, as well as on-site, embedded coaching to help teams address their organization's specific impediments. Agile project management training empowers teams to thrive in an agile development environment. These courses help individuals develop a strong understanding of agile's principles and processes as well as the advantages it poses over traditional project management.

Danube Technologies, Inc. is a project success company specializing in the improvement of management and engineering practices for software development organizations.
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Agile Tools

The next generation of agile project management.
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Agile Training

Offering several training options on software process improvement. Our agile project management courses are designed to provide your organization with a foundation in the principles and skills necessary to benefit from Agile methods. Classes are offered both as public and private in-house sessions.
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