The Agile Project Management Environment
Unlike traditional project management, which emerged from the construction,
engineering and defense industries and dates back to the 1950s, APM was born in the twentyfirst
century. In 2001, prominent software developers from both IT and software engineering
domains, convened to arrived at a consensus on how the software development industry could
produce better results. This meeting produced the Manifesto for Agile Software Development,
which states that the “highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous
delivery of valuable software.”3
APM development is conducted collaboratively, with a small co-located team. This core
team usually consists of two developers who write code in pairs (for quality control), the
customer/end-user, IT architect(s), a business analyst and a project manager. The work is
accomplished through a series of sessions where the team writes code, then tests working
modules of the system and repeats the process. There is minimal documentation as the team
relies almost exclusively on informal internal communication.
Again, this differs from the traditional approach where a considerable amount of time is
invested in planning and a significant amount of requirements documentation is produced. The
Agile team identifies and prioritizes the features based on business value, and after high-risk
components of the system are produced, works on the highest value features first. This approach
works if the solution can be delivered incrementally to the customer. If this is not possible,
features still can be built incrementally and then integrated into the first release of the system.