4 Things to do to Get Agile Right in Project Management

Agile project management requires project managers to identify high-priority tasks and complete them with quality-conscious methods. It is a cost effective and robust methodology which aims at churning the best ROI and is especially relevant in the dynamic software solutions development industry.

We discuss 4 things to do to get agile right in project management

Active user involvement

Active user involvement is the first principle of agile project management as the inputs end user reduces potential errors. End user engagement is also essential in order to keep product testing relevant and any potential problems can be fixed in the development phase as much as possible.

This ensures earliest time-to-market with the product spending very little time in the beta phase.

Fix the timescale

Agile development methodology works with a fixed timescale and even as requirements evolve, the earliest known requirements are first met to ensure timelines are met.

This ensures that the scope of the project does not change at the preplanning stage, every member actively involves themselves to ensure all requirements are listed, including the one they foresee. This principle further ensures that team members do not digress from the agenda and the original goal with which the product was being developed remains intact.

The 80/20 rule

A corollary to the previous point, it is popularly believed that once the phase 1 of development has been passed and approved with imperative additions, the scope of the product is frozen. Thus, in phase 2 it becomes difficult to get 80% of the new benefits approved.

Although, studies reveal that users actually use only about 20% or less of the original product at the outset. Agile compels project managers and teams to analyse and prioritise relevant features before implementing them for the project.

Incremental releases

The above points conclude that it is better to approach the project with small and highly relevant aspects, keep an on-going test process in place, iterate processes and release the features at an incremental rate.

This approach helps reducing risk and to increase the product value as major benefits are identified and released early in the development phase. Further, it enables the team to level some amount of cost control while remaining uncompromised in the flexibility of project execution.

All these factors combined make agile methodology highly relevant for software product development because it helps the team maintain pace with any new technology that might come in the market. With evolving mobile technology and IoT applications, agile methodology helps software product development remain relevant for a longer time.