June 16, 2016 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Agile Project Management
5 Reasons Why Agile Project Management Is Important
By Frank Mud
With organizations aiming to build work environments that promote flexibility and client satisfaction, there’s a host of brand new management techniques which are being applied to various projects across different industries. One strong trend in management is agile project management, which is based on values such as productivity, adaptability and collaboration.
Since agile management lacks that type of formal structure offered by other management styles, it relies in a high level of internal discipline and team coordination to ensure the achievement of critical business goals. Here are 5 good reasons why agile project management might become a key standard for the future management practices.
- It boosts speed-to-market
Agile management is all about early and regular releases. This type of perpetual beta approach makes the strategy so efficient because it focuses on getting higher revenue from incremental delivery, effectively helping the team to quickly bring a product to market.
In this day and age, bringing a product to market as soon as possible is a priority in many industries – especially in those where competition is high and time is of essence. Agile management makes the most from early releases by capitalizing on feedback left by early adopters in developing the product.
-
It allows for quality risk management
Focusing on incremental releases that are made visible to the product team during the development process, agile management opens up opportunities for quickly responding to potential market risks.
Thanks to this visibility, managers are enabled to take critical decisions early on in the product development process. Thereby they can ensure that the team has still a lot of time left to implement key changes to the product that are predicted to significantly improve its performance on the market, all risks taken into account.
-
It helps to quickly respond to industry changes
Traditional project management strategies often fail to incorporate changes that would ensure client satisfaction. Agile management allows for implementing such alterations with no extra time spent on them. This in turn allows to launch a better product and consequently improve the company’s position among its competitors. Agile introduces a new type of relation with clients as well since the constant interaction between the team and customers eliminates organizational hierarchy and time-consuming procedures, effectively promoting a quick incorporation of new ideas.
-
It offers a team approach to projects
Instead of focusing on long product development cycles, agile management is all about making product development cycles shorter in order to incorporate additional changes without the need to invest substantial resources. That’s why teams involved in agile projects are able to change their scope at a very rapid pace, constantly communicating with stakeholders and clients to ensure a timely reception of feedback and instruction.
-
It’s flexible
As expected, the essence of agile management technique is its inherent flexibility. Traditional management strategies require an initial process of specification to ensure that the project doesn’t grow into infinity. This approach effectively curbs innovation because it doesn’t allow for easy project changes. Keeping the project to the essential minimum, managers lose on the benefits of change.
Agile development offers a completely different perspective on this problem because it embraces change and doesn’t stick to a fixed timescale and requirement list. Instead, agile management takes the project as it evolves and as the product develops. Naturally, agile management can only be employed where the involved stakeholders understand the idea and are able to the accept new project scopes.
These 5 features of agile management are simply bound to help the style spread among managers across the globe and power a transformation in standard management practices in the years to come.
Frank Mud is a project manager at Timeo with 7 years of experience.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 16th, 2016 and is filed under Agile Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.