How Project Managers Are Able To Stay Relevant in Agile Organisations

Usually, the practice of project management has taken a linear tactic. Based on the belief that projects have a clear-cut definition of “done,” project managers have usually been trained to work towards explicit and pre-defined deadlines, budgets as well as scopes. But that assumption is becoming increasingly inaccurate.

Agile is a project management approach which uses short development cycles that are called “sprints” with a view to focusing on continuous improvement in the promotion of a product or service.

Although the gradual software development methods go as far back as 1957, agile was talked about in detail in the 1970s by William Royce who published a paper which spoke about the establishment of large software systems.

Later on in 2001, the Agile Manifesto, a “formal proclamation of four key values as well as 12 principles in order to guide an iterative in addition people-centric approach to software development,” was published by 17 software developers. These developers assembled together to discuss lightweight development methods which are based on their combined experience.

Is Agile Project Management a Good Notion?

The concept of agile project management could strike you as wishful thinking at first. It’s like the idea of limiting yourself to only one more episode of your favourite TV show on Netflix. It sounds like it could be a smart idea. It would be a great idea if you could pull it off.

However, in reality, it possibly can’t be done.

This is as most professionals, involving most project managers themselves, need to been trained to think of project management as basically the opposite of the agile approach. Consider, for instance, those traditional project managers:

• Delineate everything that is required to complete an initiative down to the last detail — the tasks as well as the deadlines.
• Develop their plans utilising longer time horizons and try to stick as close as possible to those plans in the duration.
• Select project management tools based on how well those tools give the opportunity for tracking progress, but not based on how straightforward the plan itself can be updated to reflect new realities.

Every Project Works On A Strategy

What this means is that even a diligent project manager, who skilfully as well as successfully executes all of their roles, is still missing a vital component of the job: Strategy.

A crucial benefit of the agile methodology used by product managers and developers is that it encourages regular reviewing and retooling of current plans. These processes are based on new information that the team is continually gathering and analysing.

In other words, the agile methodology allows a product team to adjust its priorities and plans. Whenever this is done, it makes strategic sense. These teams do not get stuck in an outdated plan just because they have committed to seeing it through.

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