A Beginners Guide to Agile Project Management

When starting out with agile project management, it may seem like a complex field. But it’s not. You probably already do a lot of things that it involves, so you just need to tweak a few things, and you’ll be right on track. 

It has become very popular with software teams as it has increased the speed at which they work and how they respond to market trends. So, we want to help get you on track to understanding what it is and to getting started.

What is APM?

Well, what it does is break down your projects into little sections that then get completed in work sessions. Sometimes the sessions are known as sprints. The agile project management methodologies allow teams to release parts when they are done. 

It’s a great method as it allows the team to see if the segments are successful, and if not, give them a quick fix. This, in turn, should help you avoid massive failures due to the fact you are always checking and improving every step of the way.

We give you the beginners guide to Agile Project Management 

How It Works

It’s really great to get fast feedback and adapt continuously in your work. Different methods are used to analyze work and move on quickly to the next sprint. It’s a very efficient way to work, and more and more people are taking on its methods.

Another great thing about it is that you don’t even need a project manager. The project managing duties are shared out between everyone on the team. You can, of course, use one, but it’s not completely necessary. All team members must, however, understand how to work in this new fashion to enable an efficient working environment with little room for error.

Key Roles

There are a few key terms or roles that you should be aware of when jumping into APM as you are going to be hearing them quite a lot. Here are the basic and most important ones:

• Product owner – This person has to give enough information to everyone on their team to allow them to become the last person to get to work.
• Scrum master – This person is similar to a project manager and is in charge of problems and manages interruptions to let other team members get on with the work at hand.
• Development team – This set of people should be tracking performance and looking out for any errors. This allows the core team to work a lot faster.
• Business analyst – This person needs to always be analyzing and make sure everything is organized. They should be guiding the team with the analytics.

There are, of course, many other roles involved, but the above will always exist in APM.

Different methods are used to analyze work and move on quickly to the next sprint

Pros and Cons

Like with any kind of management, there are going to be a few pros and cons. Here are just a few to help you decide if it’s the way you want to work in the future or stick with your current method.

Pros

• Fast deployment of solutions
• Better use of resources
• More rapid realization of problems

Cons

• Projects can easily go off subject
• Not much documentation
• Outcome isn’t very predictable

Give it a Try

We hope we’ve helped you a little in understanding what APM is and how it works. You can now weigh the pros and cons and see if it’s for you. But we think it’s a great way to work and can really make your team work faster and more efficiently. So, at least give it a go and see what you think.