What is agile project management?

Agile project management is an iterative methodology of managing product development projects, focusing on issuing continuous releases, incorporating customer feedback, maintaining project roles, developing quickly, responding to market trends and creating efficient workplaces. There are several agile project management frameworks that can be utilized depending on the type of project being developed, each abiding by the principles laid out by the Agile Manifesto to reach an ultimate goal.

What are agile project management examples?

• The most common example of agile project management is scrum, with extreme programming and feature-driven development also used often.

There are several frameworks that are utilized in agile project management to guide the development of a product and keep teams organized while reacting to changing circumstances, including scrum, which is a series of interlocking steps and defined roles to guide the development of product iterations. 

In scrum, a product owner creates a list of project priorities, known as the project’s backlog, that the finished product should include. Various members of the scrum team then break the backlog into small tasks to create a sprint backlog, which are the tasks set to be accomplished in a two-to-four week period. Progress is taken note of and adjusted for in a daily scrum meeting with the scrum master keeping track to make sure the team stays focused on its goal. Once each sprint ends, the team will review and ship work before beginning their next sprint. Feature-driven development (FDD) and extreme programming (XP) also seek to accomplish similar goals but take different approaches to do so.

What are the 12 principles of agile?

• The 12 principles of agile are those listed in the Agile Manifesto, created in 2001 by the founding fathers of Agile.

When the Agile Manifesto was created in 2001, 12 principles were listed to give the methodology a set of guidelines with which to adhere. Those principles include: satisfy customers through early and continuous delivery, welcome changing requirements even late in the project, deliver value frequently, break the silos of your project, build projects around motivated individuals, the most effective method of communication is face-to-face, maintain a sustainable working pace, continuous excellence enhances agility, simplicity is essential, self-organizing teams generate the most value, and finally, regularly reflect and adjust your way of work to boost effectiveness.

These 12 principles set the foundation for what agile project management seeks to accomplish, including reduced time to market, project adaptability and efficient workplaces with motivated team members. Agile allows team members to adapt to changing circumstances and account for user feedback throughout the development process, which has become critical to increasing adoption rate and user satisfaction, and limits the growth of technical debt at any enterprise. Though there are many frameworks for project management, the agile principles ensure that effective development does not come at the cost of team motivation.

What is the aim of agile project management?

• Agile helps products get developed quickly while incorporating user feedback, resulting in better user experiences and increased return on investment.

Agile offers numerous benefits when used to build products on an enterprise level. Most importantly, it accounts for user feedback, which ensures that organizations will be able to tailor their products specifically for user demands and overcome hurdles in adoption. Better product adoption means more users will be able to utilize the product over longer periods of time which also increases return on investment. Additionally, agile allows multiple teams to work on a project simultaneously and makes it possible to break work into smaller chunks. Finally, agile allows stakeholders to occupy specific roles to reduce confusion when building an iteration.