Agile Project Management

Describe the agile project management for a project where a Scrum master is facilitating the Scrum development process for a software development project. Include the following:

Part A A description of agile project management.

Part B The roles of the participants involved in the scrum approach.

Part C A description of the six steps in the agile project management process.

ANSWER

Agile Project Management

Part A: Agile Project Management.

Agile project management is considered a repetitive approach for project management, which allows breaking down large projects into more manageable tasks (Azanha et al., 2017). The agile approach in project management enables the project team to adapt quickly to change as well as deliver works effectively. This approach has enabled the project team to re-evaluate their work as well as adjust to ensure that as the customer and work landscape changes, the focus of the project team also changes. Agile is all about embracing change in the project development stages. Additionally, this approach reduces the complexity by breaking down the long month cycles of establishing the requirements for the entire project, developing the whole product, and testing only to find hundreds of flaws in the developed product.

The agile project management approach is a value-adding approach that enables the project managers to offer high quality and high priority work. Scrum approach is one of the agile approaches that have been designed to offer guidance to the teams in the delivery of a product (Azanha et al., 2017). This focuses on a process that allows the teams to respond effectively, rapidly, and efficiently to change. Scrum focuses on reducing the time and costs through collaborating with the team and the customers to create the right quality.

Part B: The roles of the participants involved in the Scrum approach.

The roles in Scrum approach are clearly defined to help individuals to carry out different tasks effectively. In the Scrum approach, there are three roles Scrum Master, the development team, and Product owner. The Scrum Master enables the product group to learn and effectively utilize scrum to achieve the intended goals. Considerably, the scrum master focuses on helping the team, the organization, and the product owner to be successful. Therefore, Scrum Masters coach, educate, and guide the product owner and the team to adopt the Agile development and skillful use of scrum. The Scrum Master eliminates impediments to ensure that the team is focusing on their work and strictly adhere to the scrum practices (Azanha et al., 2017).

The product owner maximizes the Return on Investment through identification of the product features and translating them into a prioritized list. Ideally, the product owner has the loss and profit responsibility for the product. Additionally, the product owner handles the setting of project goals, handling the trade-off schedules, the changing project requirements, and setting the priority features for the product, content, and release dates.

The development team consists of individuals that are working together to deliver the demanded product increments. These consist of cross-functional members who can attain organizational goals. For instance, these could be architects, system admins, software engineers, analysts, UI designers, and programmers. The development team ensures that they create products as demanded by the product owner.

Part C A description of the six steps in the agile project management process.

The six steps involved in the agile project management consist of the initiation phase, definition phase, design phase, development phase, implementation phase, and follow up phase (Azanha et al., 2017).

Initiation Phase: Agile project management begins with the initiation phase, where the project is examined, elaborated, and envision. The prospective sponsors examine the proposal, and upon approval, the project officially begins.

Definition phase: At this stage, the requirements linked with the project goals are specified. For instance, the requirements may include functional requirements, precondition, design limitations, and operational requirements. All the parties involved in the project collaborate on the requirements at the definition stage.

Design Phase: In the design phase, several designs for the product are developed with regards to which the project goals can be achieved. The design phase includes flow charts, prototypes, sketches, and diagrams, depending on the subject of the project. The supervisors rely on these designs to select the definitive product design, which will be produced at the final stage.

Development Phase: At the development phase, the potential suppliers offer the materials and tools order for the execution of the project. The materials and tools delivered are assessed to ensure that they meet the requirements for the achievement of the project goals.

Implementation Phase: The implementation phase is where the parties carry out the implementation. Encoding, programming, and designing are done to develop the desired product. The implementation phase greatly relies on the planning stage, where the team members focus on the assigned tasks to build deliverables.

Follow Up Phase: The follow-up phase entails monitoring and controlling the project progress. Everything is arranged as a demand to bring the project to success. During the phase, the project is signed off, and all documentation is completed.

References

Azanha, A., Argoud, A. R. T. T., de Camargo Junior, J. B., & Antoniolli, P. D. (2017). Agile project management with Scrum. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.