Why Use Agile?
With the speed of change in trends and demands, digital transformation and business agility have become necessities for every company to stay competitive. Whether you’re building an app or innovating a process, the cornerstone of developing the product is the project management approach. It needs to solve the right problem with the right solution for the right people at the right time at the right cost. Therefore, it is crucial to know the reasons behind choosing a project management framework, and how to go about it.
Waterfall Projects
A traditional way to develop software is using Waterfall. Taken from the construction and manufacturing processes, it is a linear approach to software development that requires tasks and deliverables within a phase to be done before moving to the next phase. Starting with gathering requirements, it goes onto analyzing and designing the solution, then to developing and testing, and finally into acceptance and release.
A project team using Waterfall is usually set up in a hierarchical structure, led by a project manager, then the development team next in line. Requests, approvals, and feedback go through different decision levels, taking up some time during the project timeline. Customers are only involved with the development team during the first phase when requirements are being gathered, and the later phases, when acceptance of deliverables is being done.
In Waterfall, the scope is fixed by a contract, leaving little room for error and making defect fixing done too late. For example: if there is a misunderstanding in a requirement from the analysis phase, this could lead to the wrong module being developed, consequently taking up time during the testing phase to accommodate fixes and changes.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios