Agile Project Management (AgilePM) seeks to bring order to chaotic corporate environments using several tools, techniques, and elements of the project lifecycle. Fundamentally, agile project management aims to deliver maximum value according to specific business priorities in the time and budget allocated. AgilePM is particularly useful in situations where the drive to deliver is greater than the perceived risk.
Aspect
Explanation
Concept Overview
Agile Management is an approach to project and organizational management that emphasizes adaptability, collaboration, and customer-centricity. It evolved from the Agile Manifesto, which outlines a set of values and principles for Agile software development. Agile Management extends these principles to various aspects of business, including project management, product development, and organizational culture. It is characterized by iterative and incremental work, frequent feedback loops, and a focus on delivering value to customers.
Key Principles
Agile Management is guided by several key principles: 1. Customer Value: Prioritizing customer needs and delivering value is paramount. 2. Iterative and Incremental Work: Projects are broken into small, manageable iterations, with continuous improvement and feedback. 3. Collaboration and Empowerment: Cross-functional teams collaborate closely and are empowered to make decisions. 4. Adaptability: Embracing change and adjusting plans in response to new information or requirements. 5. Transparency: Providing visibility into work progress and decision-making processes. 6. Quality Focus: Emphasizing quality in all aspects of work. 7. Continuous Improvement: Encouraging ongoing learning and improvement. 8. Delivery of Value: Delivering working products or features frequently to maximize value.
Agile Frameworks
Agile Management can be implemented through various frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming (XP), each with its own practices and methodologies. These frameworks provide structure and guidance for Agile teams.
Roles and Responsibilities
Agile Management often involves specific roles and responsibilities: 1. Product Owner: Represents the customer and defines product requirements. 2. Scrum Master: Facilitates Agile practices and removes obstacles for the development team (in Scrum). 3. Development Team: Cross-functional team members responsible for delivering the product. 4. Stakeholders: Include customers, users, and anyone with an interest in the product’s success.
Practices and Techniques
Agile Management encompasses various practices and techniques: 1. Daily Stand-ups: Short, daily team meetings to discuss progress and obstacles. 2. User Stories: Brief, user-centric descriptions of product functionality. 3. Retrospectives: Periodic meetings to reflect on team performance and identify improvements. 4. Backlog Prioritization: Organizing work items by priority. 5. Visual Management: Using boards or charts to visualize work progress (as in Kanban). 6. Continuous Integration: Frequent integration of code changes into a shared repository. 7. Test-Driven Development (TDD): Writing tests before coding to ensure functionality.
Benefits and Impact
Agile Management offers several benefits and impacts: 1. Faster Delivery: Agile practices accelerate product delivery through iterative cycles. 2. Customer Satisfaction: Prioritizing customer needs leads to higher satisfaction. 3. Adaptability: Agile organizations can respond quickly to changing market conditions. 4. Quality Improvement: A focus on quality reduces defects and rework. 5. Employee Engagement: Cross-functional teams often experience higher job satisfaction. 6. Transparency: Stakeholders have visibility into project progress. 7. Innovation: Frequent feedback encourages innovation and creativity.
Challenges and Risks
Challenges in implementing Agile Management may include resistance to change, difficulties in estimating work, and the need for cultural shifts within organizations. Risks involve misinterpretation of Agile principles, leading to ineffective or chaotic implementation.
Although often associated with software development and the IT industry, AgilePM offers rather general advice that any business can use effectively – regardless of the industry.
By undertaking accredited AgilePM training, individuals will learn how to:
Apply the underpinning philosophy of AgilePM to a project situation.
Implement popular Agile techniques such as the MoSCoW method and iterative development.
Assign roles and responsibilities when leading an agile project.
Test, estimate, and measure progress during an agile project, including the communication of progress to interested stakeholders.
Benefits for businesses who adopt AgilePM methodology
AgilePM is relatively easy to implement and has a proven track record of delivering several key benefits.
These include:
Quality
AgilePM prioritizes quality at every stage of the project lifecycle through strict criteria.
By regularly assessing each iterative result, the business becomes more responsive to changing conditions.
For example, a previously unidentified gap in the market of a new product might create demand for additional features.
Rather than prioritizing the completion of the product, AgilePM practitioners can adjust the product accordingly to maximize ROI.
Clarity
Clarity is important because it avoids a scenario where products become unfocused and wasteful because of a lack of scope.
AgilePM defines a project using predetermined KPIs that team members can measure progress against to ensure that the project remains on track.
Speed
When large projects are delivered incrementally, the speed and efficiency of appreciable results increase.
Faster turnaround times increase stakeholder engagement and lead to higher customer satisfaction.
Enjoying a series of quick wins, the project team itself is also more motivated to work quickly and studiously toward the next iteration.
Risk mitigation
Iteration is a core component of AgilePM. Project teams consistently review their work for flaws or vulnerabilities, significantly reducing the risks of costly or time-consuming fixes later in the process.
This allows agile projects to be delivered on time and budget.
Efficient management
Many organizations incorporate a top-down (hierarchical) approach to managing their staff.
However, Agile Project Management advocates a more lateral approach.
Team members are given greater autonomy so long as they work within the boundaries of predetermined roles and responsibilities.
This encourages accountability and allows each team member to work to their strengths.
When to Use Agile Management:
Agile management is suitable in various business scenarios:
Product Development: Particularly in industries with rapidly changing customer requirements, such as software development, product design, and manufacturing.
Project Management: For complex projects where traditional project management approaches may struggle to adapt to evolving requirements.
Innovation Initiatives: When organizations want to foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous improvement.
Cross-Functional Teams: When working with diverse teams, Agile can help streamline communication and collaboration.
Market Uncertainty: In markets with high levels of uncertainty and competition, Agile’s adaptability is a valuable asset.
How to Implement Agile Management Effectively:
To implement Agile management effectively, consider the following steps:
Training and Education: Provide training to teams and leaders in Agile methodologies and principles.
Cross-Functional Teams: Form cross-functional teams with diverse skills and expertise.
Iterative Planning: Develop a project roadmap with iterative cycles, or sprints, to deliver value incrementally.
Continuous Feedback: Establish regular feedback loops with stakeholders and customers to gather insights and refine priorities.
Visual Management: Use visual boards, such as Kanban boards or Scrum boards, to track progress and work items.
Retrospectives: Hold regular retrospectives to reflect on team performance and identify areas for improvement.
Expected Benefits of Agile Management:
When using Agile management effectively, expect the following benefits:
Faster Time-to-Market: Agile allows for quicker product or project releases, enabling organizations to respond rapidly to market changes.
Improved Quality: Frequent testing and feedback lead to higher-quality deliverables.
Enhanced Collaboration: Agile promotes collaboration and communication among team members, fostering a more productive work environment.
Customer Satisfaction: Prioritizing customer needs results in products and services that better align with customer expectations.
Adaptability: Agile’s flexibility and adaptability help organizations navigate change and uncertainty more effectively.
Potential Drawbacks of Agile Management:
While Agile management offers numerous advantages, it also has potential drawbacks:
Complexity: Agile can be complex to implement, requiring training and a cultural shift within organizations.
Resource Intensive: Agile projects may require more resources due to their iterative nature.
Scope Creep: Frequent changes and adaptations can lead to scope creep if not managed carefully.
Resistance to Change: Traditional organizations may face resistance when transitioning to Agile methodologies.
Agile Management Implementation Case Studies:
Software Development – Agile Development Team:
Scenario: A software development company transitions from a traditional Waterfall approach to Agile methodologies like Scrum. They form cross-functional development teams, conduct daily stand-up meetings, and prioritize customer feedback.
Implications: The company experiences faster release cycles, improved product quality, and greater customer satisfaction due to the Agile approach’s adaptability and responsiveness.
Manufacturing – Agile Production Line:
Scenario: A manufacturing facility adopts Agile principles to enhance production efficiency. They implement Kanban boards to visualize work, empower workers to make decisions, and continuously improve processes.
Implications: Production lead times are reduced, work-in-progress is minimized, and defects are identified and resolved quickly, resulting in cost savings and higher product quality.
Marketing – Agile Marketing Team:
Scenario: A marketing agency embraces Agile management in its campaigns. They organize marketing teams into cross-functional units, conduct sprint planning, and regularly review campaign performance.
Implications: The agency achieves greater campaign flexibility, adapts to changing market conditions more effectively, and produces data-driven campaigns that yield higher ROI.
Scenario: A progressive school incorporates Agile principles into its teaching methods. Teachers and students collaborate to set learning goals, conduct regular retrospectives, and adapt curriculum based on student feedback.
Implications: Students become more engaged in the learning process, take ownership of their education, and experience improved academic performance.
Healthcare – Agile Patient Care:
Scenario: A hospital adopts Agile management practices to improve patient care. They organize interdisciplinary care teams, hold daily huddles to discuss patient progress, and use feedback to adapt treatment plans.
Implications: Patient outcomes improve, waiting times decrease, and healthcare providers collaborate more effectively, enhancing the overall quality of care.
Construction – Agile Project Management:
Scenario: A construction firm applies Agile principles to project management. They employ visual boards to track progress, hold frequent check-ins with subcontractors, and prioritize changes based on customer needs.
Implications: Projects are completed on time and within budget, construction quality is improved, and clients are more satisfied with the flexibility to adapt project scope as necessary.
Key takeaways
Agile Project Management is one of the most popular and easy to implement agile methodologies. It allows project teams to work collaboratively with a focus on delivering maximum value given time or budgetary constraints.
Agile Project Management is often associated with software development, but it can be used by any business regardless of the industry it operates in.
Agile Project Management delivers many benefits to businesses. High-quality products that are sensitive to consumer demands is one such benefit. AgilePM principles also mitigate risk and give team members a greater sense of autonomy and accountability.
Key Highlights of Agile Project Management (AgilePM):
Definition and Purpose:
Agile Project Management (AgilePM) is a methodology that employs tools, techniques, and project lifecycle elements to bring order to complex corporate environments.
It aims to deliver maximum value based on business priorities within allocated time and budget constraints, particularly suitable when the drive to deliver is higher than perceived risk.
Applicability and General Advice:
While commonly associated with IT and software development, AgilePM offers versatile strategies applicable to businesses across industries.
Accredited AgilePM training equips individuals to:
Apply AgilePM philosophy to project scenarios.
Implement Agile techniques like the MoSCoW method and iterative development.
Assign roles, responsibilities, and effectively lead Agile projects.
Test, estimate, measure progress, and communicate it to stakeholders.
Benefits for Adopting AgilePM:
Quality: AgilePM emphasizes quality throughout the project lifecycle via rigorous criteria and continuous assessment of iterative results. Adaptation to changing conditions is facilitated, maximizing ROI.
Clarity: Defined by predetermined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), AgilePM ensures projects stay focused, avoiding wasteful scope expansion.
Speed: Incremental delivery speeds up project results, enhancing stakeholder engagement and satisfaction while motivating teams with quick wins.
Risk Mitigation: Iteration minimizes flaws and vulnerabilities, reducing the risk of costly fixes and ensuring on-time and on-budget project completion.
Efficient Management: AgilePM promotes lateral over hierarchical management, granting team members autonomy within predefined roles. This encourages accountability and leverages individual strengths.
Key Takeaways:
Agile Project Management is a highly popular and easily implementable methodology emphasizing collaborative work and value delivery under time and budget constraints.
It transcends software development and can be adopted by businesses across industries.
AgilePM offers numerous benefits, including high-quality consumer-sensitive products, risk mitigation, and empowered team members through greater autonomy and accountability.
Related Frameworks
Description
When to Apply
Scrum Framework
– Scrum is an iterative and incremental Agile framework for managing complex projects. – It emphasizes empirical process control, self-organization, and collaboration to deliver high-value products. – Scrum roles include the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development Team. – It consists of sprints, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives for continuous improvement.
– When managing software development projects or other complex initiatives where requirements may change frequently, and iterative delivery is preferred.
Kanban Method
– Kanban is a visual management tool that helps teams optimize workflow and limit work in progress. – It visualizes the flow of work on a Kanban board, with columns representing different stages of the workflow. – It focuses on continuous delivery, pull-based scheduling, and workflow transparency to improve efficiency and effectiveness. – Kanban allows teams to identify bottlenecks and optimize processes iteratively.
– When managing workflows or projects that require flexibility, visualizing work, and minimizing waste by limiting work in progress.
Extreme Programming (XP)
– Extreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology that emphasizes agility, communication, and feedback. – It advocates for iterative development, continuous integration, and test-driven development (TDD). – XP practices include pair programming, simple design, refactoring, and collective code ownership. – It aims to improve software quality, reduce risk, and adapt to changing requirements quickly.
– When developing software products with a focus on quality, responsiveness to customer feedback, and rapid iteration.
Lean Software Development
– Lean Software Development applies lean principles to software development, focusing on eliminating waste, amplifying learning, and delivering value. – It emphasizes customer collaboration, empowering teams, and building integrity into the product. – Lean practices include value stream mapping, continuous improvement, and visual management. – It aims to optimize the entire software delivery process for efficiency and effectiveness.
– When aiming to streamline software development processes, eliminate waste, and deliver value to customers quickly and continuously.
Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
– DSDM is an agile project delivery framework that emphasizes frequent delivery, collaboration, and iterative development. – It provides a flexible and scalable approach to managing projects, accommodating changing requirements and priorities. – DSDM phases include feasibility, business study, functional model iteration, and implementation. – It aims to deliver fit-for-purpose solutions on time and within budget.
– When managing projects with fixed deadlines and evolving requirements, and when collaboration between business stakeholders and development teams is crucial.
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
– SAFe is a scalable and collaborative framework for large-scale Agile projects. – It provides guidance on organizational alignment, team collaboration, and continuous delivery. – SAFe includes roles, events, and artifacts tailored for enterprise-level agility. – It supports program increment planning, value stream mapping, and devops practices for end-to-end delivery.
– When implementing Agile at scale across large organizations or managing complex projects with multiple teams and dependencies.
Lean Six Sigma
– Lean Six Sigma combines Lean principles with Six Sigma methodologies to optimize processes and reduce defects. – It focuses on identifying waste, standardizing processes, and improving quality. – Lean Six Sigma uses data-driven analysis and continuous improvement to achieve operational excellence. – It employs DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) and DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) methodologies.
– When aiming to improve process efficiency, reduce defects, and enhance overall organizational performance by combining Lean and Six Sigma methodologies.
Agile Manifesto
– The Agile Manifesto is a set of values and principles for agile software development. – It prioritizes individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan. – The manifesto emphasizes customer satisfaction, iterative development, and adaptive planning.
– When initiating Agile transformations or projects, to reinforce core agile values and principles, and guide decision-making and behavior within Agile teams.
Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
– Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an iterative and incremental Agile framework focused on feature delivery. – It emphasizes modeling, design, and development of features in small, frequent iterations. – FDD practices include domain object modeling, feature lists, short iterations, and regular builds. – It aims to deliver visible, working functionality early and continuously throughout the project.
– When managing projects with a focus on delivering features and functionality in a structured, incremental manner, particularly suited for projects with well-defined feature sets.
AIOps is the application of artificial intelligence to IT operations. It has become particularly useful for modern IT management in hybridized, distributed, and dynamic environments. AIOps has become a key operational component of modern digital-based organizations, built around software and algorithms.
Agile started as a lightweight development method compared to heavyweight software development, which is the core paradigm of the previous decades of software development. By 2001 the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was born as a set of principles that defined the new paradigm for software development as a continuous iteration. This would also influence the way of doing business.
Agile Program Management is a means of managing, planning, and coordinating interrelated work in such a way that value delivery is emphasized for all key stakeholders. Agile Program Management (AgilePgM) is a disciplined yet flexible agile approach to managing transformational change within an organization.
Agile project management (APM) is a strategy that breaks large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. In the APM methodology, each project is completed in small sections – often referred to as iterations. Each iteration is completed according to its project life cycle, beginning with the initial design and progressing to testing and then quality assurance.
Agile Modeling (AM) is a methodology for modeling and documenting software-based systems. Agile Modeling is critical to the rapid and continuous delivery of software. It is a collection of values, principles, and practices that guide effective, lightweight software modeling.
Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA) is certification in the form of guidance and training for business analysts seeking to work in agile environments. To support this shift, AgileBA also helps the business analyst relate Agile projects to a wider organizational mission or strategy. To ensure that analysts have the necessary skills and expertise, AgileBA certification was developed.
Agile leadership is the embodiment of agile manifesto principles by a manager or management team. Agile leadership impacts two important levels of a business. The structural level defines the roles, responsibilities, and key performance indicators. The behavioral level describes the actions leaders exhibit to others based on agile principles.
The andon system alerts managerial, maintenance, or other staff of a production process problem. The alert itself can be activated manually with a button or pull cord, but it can also be activated automatically by production equipment. Most Andon boards utilize three colored lights similar to a traffic signal: green (no errors), yellow or amber (problem identified, or quality check needed), and red (production stopped due to unidentified issue).
Bimodal Portfolio Management (BimodalPfM) helps an organization manage both agile and traditional portfolios concurrently. Bimodal Portfolio Management – sometimes referred to as bimodal development – was coined by research and advisory company Gartner. The firm argued that many agile organizations still needed to run some aspects of their operations using traditional delivery models.
Business innovation is about creating new opportunities for an organization to reinvent its core offerings, revenue streams, and enhance the value proposition for existing or new customers, thus renewing its whole business model. Business innovation springs by understanding the structure of the market, thus adapting or anticipating those changes.
Business modelinnovation is about increasing the success of an organization with existing products and technologies by crafting a compelling value proposition able to propel a new business model to scale up customers and create a lasting competitive advantage. And it all starts by mastering the key customers.
A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.
That is a process that requires a continuous feedback loop to develop a valuable product and build a viable business model. Continuous innovation is a mindset where products and services are designed and delivered to tune them around the customers’ problem and not the technical solution of its founders.
A design sprint is a proven five-day process where critical business questions are answered through speedy design and prototyping, focusing on the end-user. A design sprint starts with a weekly challenge that should finish with a prototype, test at the end, and therefore a lesson learned to be iterated.
Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO, defined design thinking as “a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” Therefore, desirability, feasibility, and viability are balanced to solve critical problems.
DevOps refers to a series of practices performed to perform automated software development processes. It is a conjugation of the term “development” and “operations” to emphasize how functions integrate across IT teams. DevOps strategies promote seamless building, testing, and deployment of products. It aims to bridge a gap between development and operations teams to streamline the development altogether.
Product discovery is a critical part of agile methodologies, as its aim is to ensure that products customers love are built. Product discovery involves learning through a raft of methods, including design thinking, lean start-up, and A/B testing to name a few. Dual Track Agile is an agile methodology containing two separate tracks: the “discovery” track and the “delivery” track.
eXtreme Programming was developed in the late 1990s by Ken Beck, Ron Jeffries, and Ward Cunningham. During this time, the trio was working on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System (C3) to help manage the company payroll system. eXtreme Programming (XP) is a software development methodology. It is designed to improve software quality and the ability of software to adapt to changing customer needs.
Feature-Driven Development is a pragmatic software process that is client and architecture-centric. Feature-Driven Development (FDD) is an agile software development model that organizes workflow according to which features need to be developed next.
A Gemba Walk is a fundamental component of lean management. It describes the personal observation of work to learn more about it. Gemba is a Japanese word that loosely translates as “the real place”, or in business, “the place where value is created”. The Gemba Walk as a concept was created by Taiichi Ohno, the father of the Toyota Production System of lean manufacturing. Ohno wanted to encourage management executives to leave their offices and see where the real work happened. This, he hoped, would build relationships between employees with vastly different skillsets and build trust.
GIST Planning is a relatively easy and lightweight agile approach to product planning that favors autonomous working. GIST Planning is a lean and agile methodology that was created by former Google product manager Itamar Gilad. GIST Planning seeks to address this situation by creating lightweight plans that are responsive and adaptable to change. GIST Planning also improves team velocity, autonomy, and alignment by reducing the pervasive influence of management. It consists of four blocks: goals, ideas, step-projects, and tasks.
The ICE Scoring Model is an agile methodology that prioritizes features using data according to three components: impact, confidence, and ease of implementation. The ICE Scoring Model was initially created by author and growth expert Sean Ellis to help companies expand. Today, the model is broadly used to prioritize projects, features, initiatives, and rollouts. It is ideally suited for early-stage product development where there is a continuous flow of ideas and momentum must be maintained.
An innovation funnel is a tool or process ensuring only the best ideas are executed. In a metaphorical sense, the funnel screens innovative ideas for viability so that only the best products, processes, or business models are launched to the market. An innovation funnel provides a framework for the screening and testing of innovative ideas for viability.
According to how well defined is the problem and how well defined the domain, we have four main types of innovations: basic research (problem and domain or not well defined); breakthrough innovation (domain is not well defined, the problem is well defined); sustaining innovation (both problem and domain are well defined); and disruptive innovation (domain is well defined, the problem is not well defined).
The innovation loop is a methodology/framework derived from the Bell Labs, which produced innovation at scale throughout the 20th century. They learned how to leverage a hybrid innovation management model based on science, invention, engineering, and manufacturing at scale. By leveraging individual genius, creativity, and small/large groups.
The Agile methodology has been primarily thought of for software development (and other business disciplines have also adopted it). Lean thinking is a process improvement technique where teams prioritize the value streams to improve it continuously. Both methodologies look at the customer as the key driver to improvement and waste reduction. Both methodologies look at improvement as something continuous.
A startup company is a high-tech business that tries to build a scalable business model in tech-driven industries. A startup company usually follows a lean methodology, where continuous innovation, driven by built-in viral loops is the rule. Thus, driving growth and building network effects as a consequence of this strategy.
As pointed out by Eric Ries, a minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort through a cycle of build, measure, learn; that is the foundation of the lean startup methodology.
Kanban is a lean manufacturing framework first developed by Toyota in the late 1940s. The Kanban framework is a means of visualizing work as it moves through identifying potential bottlenecks. It does that through a process called just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing to optimize engineering processes, speed up manufacturing products, and improve the go-to-market strategy.
Jidoka was first used in 1896 by Sakichi Toyoda, who invented a textile loom that would stop automatically when it encountered a defective thread. Jidoka is a Japanese term used in lean manufacturing. The term describes a scenario where machines cease operating without human intervention when a problem or defect is discovered.
The PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle was first proposed by American physicist and engineer Walter A. Shewhart in the 1920s. The PDCA cycle is a continuous process and product improvement method and an essential component of the lean manufacturing philosophy.
RAD was first introduced by author and consultant James Martin in 1991. Martin recognized and then took advantage of the endless malleability of software in designing development models. Rapid Application Development (RAD) is a methodology focusing on delivering rapidly through continuous feedback and frequent iterations.
Retrospective analyses are held after a project to determine what worked well and what did not. They are also conducted at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. Agile practitioners call these meetings retrospectives or retros. They are an effective way to check the pulse of a project team, reflect on the work performed to date, and reach a consensus on how to tackle the next sprint cycle. These are the five stages of a retrospective analysis for effective Agile project management: set the stage, gather the data, generate insights, decide on the next steps, and close the retrospective.
Scaled Agile Lean Development (ScALeD) helps businesses discover a balanced approach to agile transition and scaling questions. The ScALed approach helps businesses successfully respond to change. Inspired by a combination of lean and agile values, ScALed is practitioner-based and can be completed through various agile frameworks and practices.
The SMED (single minute exchange of die) method is a lean production framework to reduce waste and increase production efficiency. The SMED method is a framework for reducing the time associated with completing an equipment changeover.
The Spotify Model is an autonomous approach to scaling agile, focusing on culture communication, accountability, and quality. The Spotify model was first recognized in 2012 after Henrik Kniberg, and Anders Ivarsson released a white paper detailing how streaming company Spotify approached agility. Therefore, the Spotify model represents an evolution of agile.
As the name suggests, TDD is a test-driven technique for delivering high-quality software rapidly and sustainably. It is an iterative approach based on the idea that a failing test should be written before any code for a feature or function is written. Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an approach to software development that relies on very short development cycles.
Timeboxing is a simple yet powerful time-management technique for improving productivity. Timeboxing describes the process of proactively scheduling a block of time to spend on a task in the future. It was first described by author James Martin in a book about agile software development.
Scrum is a methodology co-created by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for effective team collaboration on complex products. Scrum was primarily thought for software development projects to deliver new software capability every 2-4 weeks. It is a sub-group of agile also used in project management to improve startups’ productivity.
Scrumban is a project management framework that is a hybrid of two popular agile methodologies: Scrum and Kanban. Scrumban is a popular approach to helping businesses focus on the right strategic tasks while simultaneously strengthening their processes.
Scrum anti-patterns describe any attractive, easy-to-implement solution that ultimately makes a problem worse. Therefore, these are the practice not to follow to prevent issues from emerging. Some classic examples of scrum anti-patterns comprise absent product owners, pre-assigned tickets (making individuals work in isolation), and discounting retrospectives (where review meetings are not useful to really make improvements).
Scrum at Scale (Scrum@Scale) is a framework that Scrum teams use to address complex problems and deliver high-value products. Scrum at Scale was created through a joint venture between the Scrum Alliance and Scrum Inc. The joint venture was overseen by Jeff Sutherland, a co-creator of Scrum and one of the principal authors of the Agile Manifesto.
Six Sigma is a data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating errors or defects in a product, service, or process. Six Sigma was developed by Motorola as a management approach based on quality fundamentals in the early 1980s. A decade later, it was popularized by General Electric who estimated that the methodology saved them $12 billion in the first five years of operation.
Stretch objectives describe any task an agile team plans to complete without expressly committing to do so. Teams incorporate stretch objectives during a Sprint or Program Increment (PI) as part of Scaled Agile. They are used when the agile team is unsure of its capacity to attain an objective. Therefore, stretch objectives are instead outcomes that, while extremely desirable, are not the difference between the success or failure of each sprint.
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an early form of lean manufacturing created by auto-manufacturer Toyota. Created by the Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1940s and 50s, the Toyota Production System seeks to manufacture vehicles ordered by customers most quickly and efficiently possible.
The Total Quality Management (TQM) framework is a technique based on the premise that employees continuously work on their ability to provide value to customers. Importantly, the word “total” means that all employees are involved in the process – regardless of whether they work in development, production, or fulfillment.
The waterfall model was first described by Herbert D. Benington in 1956 during a presentation about the software used in radar imaging during the Cold War. Since there were no knowledge-based, creative software development strategies at the time, the waterfall method became standard practice. The waterfall model is a linear and sequential project management framework.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
