What is Agile Project Management?
Jim Highsmith, one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto and a recognised expert in agile approaches, has defined agility in project management by the following statements: "Agility is the ability to both create and respond to change in order to profit in a turbulent business environment," and "Agility is the ability to balance flexibility and stability" (16).
In contrast with traditional project methods, agile methods emphasise the incremental delivery of working products or prototypes for client evaluation and optimisation. While so-called "predictive" project management methods assume that the entire set of requirements and activities can be forecast at the beginning of the project, agile methods combine all the elements of product development, such as requirements, analysis, design, development and testing — in brief, regular iterations. Each iteration delivers a working product or prototype, and the response to that product or prototype serves as crucial input into the succeeding iterations.
Agile theory assumes that changes, improvements and additional features will be incorporated throughout the product development life cycle, and that change, rather than perceived as a failing of the process, is seen as an opportunity to improve the product and make it more fit for its use and business purpose.
The Agile Manifesto
Dating back to the 1950s, traditional project management emerged from the construction/engineering and defence industries. Evolving from a meeting in 2001 of major software development and IT industry leaders who were concerned about creating better project management results for their clients, agile project manage¬ment is a twenty-first century management approach. The 2001 meeting of experts resulted in the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto, written by a group of advocates of iterative and incremental development methods, is the foundation document of the agile movement, and, in combination with a set of 12 agile principles, sets forth the underlying philosophical concepts of agile project management. It is important to note here that agile project management encompasses all aspects of project delivery and not just on the sole function of project management practices. It is inclusive of all business analysis, systems analysis and development, as well as all levels of quality assurance and testing.
The manifesto is included here to enable the reader to understand that the "Go Agile" service's objectives are to help transition an organisation from its current projects delivery approach to one that is compatible with the principles outlined in the manifesto (Agile Manifesto)