PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Fundamentals of Project Management



Fundamentals of Project Management

Task 1: Success and Failure of Agile Methods

Various methodologies and techniques are used for project management today. Different methodologies fit to different applications, as these methodologies have certain advantages and disadvantages. Agile development methodologies are used as an alternative to the traditional/sequential project development approaches (Agile Methodology, 2008). These methodologies provide opportunities to the users or customers of the project to assess the product throughout the lifecycle of development. The agile development methodologies are often applied to software development due to their iterative nature, and are also known as iterative or incremental development methodologies.

The agile development approach has mainly been successful for the software development projects. Some of the reasons due to which agile methodologies come out to be successful in software projects are listed below:

It is practically impossible to define all the software requirements in the initial phases, unless the project is very small. Agile methodologies such as RUP, XP, and Scrum make it possible to define the project requirements multiple times due to its iterative nature. Thus, the methodology becomes far more suitable for the large projects as compared to SSADM or other methodologies which follow the waterfall model (Krutchen, 2004). The agile methodologies make the teams able to handle unpredictability by through iterative and incremental work pieces.

Some of the agile software project development methodologies aim at maximizing the productivity of the project development team members. For example, the Scrum methodology works on the concept of iterations (sprints), and delivers multiple working releases of the project. It is the most flexible and most commonly used agile methodology. Usually, the approach develops deliverables in 30 days period. Figure 1 summarizes this development process (Control Chaos, 2010). The team itself is responsible for creating the deliverable in specified period; no external comments are taken into account.

Some agile development methodologies such as XP work on making a number of releases for the project. As soon as first working version of software is ready, it is released. In the later version, more functionality is kept on adding and more bugs are kept on fixed. Each version is separated from the other with a time slot of nearly 3 months. Requirements are not fixed in the beginning of the development project; rather the customer keeps on informing the development team throughout the development lifetime. It is to be noted that these releases are made very quickly (Gilb, 2005, p.1). Thus, the customer may start using the product during the development, and can make useful comments for further modifications and changes. Therefore, it is believed that agile methodologies have the capability to reduce the level of risk and produce quick value for the business (McGannon, 2012).

The problem of procrastination is largely avoided by using agile methods. Procrastination refers to the situation when the development teams dread some large task and they fail to interpret that what should they do next. Since agile methodologies rely on evolution of product over time, going through large number ...