What is Agile Project Management?

Agile project management is an iterative approach to product delivery that builds incrementally from the start of the project, instead of trying to deliver the entire product at once near the end. The approach is based on the Agile Manifesto (2001).

Agile works by breaking projects down into little bits of user functionality, prioritizing them, and then continuously delivering them in 2-4 week cycles called iterations or sprints.

Teams operate in short cycles aimed at continuous improvement to develop only what the users want. Work goals are defined by the team before each cycle starts. The team communicates directly with the customer if they have any questions concerning the function. The customer's priorities are analyzed by the Product Owner and fed into the team to keep them working on the highest priority items. The team estimates how much time work will take in an iteration, as well as how to do the work.

Performance is measured by customers at the end of the iteration. The lessons learned in each iteration are captured in retrospectives and used in future iterations. In this way, the products are constantly improved and the process for developing them also improved.

Why use Agile Principles and Agile Methodology?

Is your organization trending toward Agile Project Management? Do you want to expand your skills to include Agile methodologies? Many organizations are adopting Agile methodologies to help increase team performance, improve customer satisfaction and increase project versatility. Organizations that have adopted Agile methodologies are able to respond to market dynamics and complete more of their projects successfully. Agile training is an ideal way to level-set your organization and project team on the foundations of Agile and associated implementation methodologies. Agile training can clear up many misconceptions and misunderstandings about the operations of Agile. It can also help expose the underlying Agile concepts and clarify the differences between the various implementation methods.

Often when organizations describe problems with "Agile" they are describing challenges with executing an Agile methodology. Having all project team members (both technical and business) attend common training, ideally in the same class, can eliminate some of these problems. The entire team should hear the same message, concepts, and implementation tactics creating a common language and perspective. This shared understanding strongly increases the probability of the team inspecting and adapting together using a common language and practices, thus reducing the conflicts in the future.

Whether you're looking for Agile certification to expand your personal Agile knowledge or to train multiple layers of your organization on Agile methodologies, we can get you up to speed quickly with our Agile training. We can teach you about all the principles and practices of Agile, including Scrum, XP and Lean.

Benefits of Implementing Agile Methodologies

During the project, end-user involvement is encouraged, providing visibility and transparency. There is continuous planning and feedback throughout the process, delivering value to the business from the beginning of the project.

Companies embrace this idea of delivering business value early in the process making it easier to lower risks associated with development. Some of the main benefits of agile project management are:

High Product Quality

• Regular testing to see that the product is working during the development
• Defining and elaborating requirements just in time
• Incorporating continuous integration and daily testing into the development process
• Sprint retrospectives to continuously improve processes and work
• Software is developed in incremental, rapid cycles.

Higher Customer Satisfaction

• Demonstrating working functionalities to customers
• Delivering products to market quicker and more often with every release
• Keeping customers involved and engaged

Increased Project control

• Daily Sprint meetings
• Transparency though information radiators

Reduced Risks

• Developing in sprints, ensuring a brief time between feature development
• Agile gives freedom when recent changes need to be implemented
• Adaptation to the client's needs and preferences through the development process

Faster ROI

• Focusing on Business value allowing the client to determine the priority of features
• A functional 'ready to market' product after few iterations
• Agile means fast product releases and ability to gauge customer reaction

Agile Training Courses

Project Management Academy offers the following Agile training courses teaching Agile methodologies:

PMI-ACP Certification Training

Learn the principles and practices of agile or earn a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® certification. This course includes the 21 contact hours (PDUs) required to take the PMI-ACP exam.

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Agile Fundamentals Training

Learn the principles and practices of Agile, including Scrum. This course provides 16 hours of on-demand learning over a variety of methodologies.

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Certified ScrumMaster

This two-day interactive course will provide an overview of the Scrum framework and prepare attendees to take on the Scrum Master role.

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Certified Scrum Product Owner

Participants will learn these topics through exercises, facilitated discussions and case studies based on the instructor's real-world experience in working with Scrum teams.

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Scrum Methodology Training

This course will teach you Scrum methodologies, technologies, and framework basics. It will also enable you to become an effective and efficient leader of a Scrum team.

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