Agile Project Management – APM Lifecycle and APM Framework

Agile Methodologies:

Agile is like an umbrella that uses various specific agile methodologies which can be broadly classified as lightweight approaches and fuller approaches. Examples of Lightweight approaches are Scrum, Extreme programming and Lean and so on. And examples of fuller approaches of Agile are Dynamic Systems Development Method DSDM Atern, Agile unified process and so on. Agile methodologies share many practices used in the development process. The most important practice shared by all agile methodologies is - they all work in an incremental and iterative manner, wherein the requirements are stack-ranked and prioritized. The team works on the requirements in priority order, in short time-boxes called iterations.

Agile Project Management Life-Cycle:

The process of Agile Project Management can be classified in the following way:

• Initiating: Occurs only once at the beginning of a project or phase
• Planning: Being iterative, it occurs at the beginning of the project as well as the beginning of each iteration
• Executing: Executes through iterations and so each iteration will see execution  activity peaking somewhere in the middle
• Controlling: Controlling is about checking progress against plan and taking steps to bring things back on track – it would happen hand-in-hand with execution
• Closing: Bring projects to orderly closure – would typically happen only once at the end of a project or phase.

Agile Project Management Framework:

APM Framework depicts a series of steps that take you from an initial vision of the product to the final product. Envision and Close usually occurs only once during a project.

The various steps in the agile project management framework and the activities involved in each phase can be classified as below:
1) Envision: Creating a high level vision for the project
2) Speculate: Creating a high level road map for the project, based on the available information. Typically a release plan and a tentative feature list will emerge from this phase
3) Explore: This is where the team will start creating and delivering the features, exploring various options and innovating as best as they can
4) Adapt: The team will constantly adapt and change their plan based on the feedback they receive about the completed features and their experiences from developing them
5) Close: After the team has generated sufficient value – or whenever the customer has had enough, the project will close and the features delivered will be finalized.

To know more about Agile Project Management and agile processes and APM framework in detail you can join Simplilearn’s PMI-ACP online training course. You can also attend PMI-ACP agile certification classroom training courses in your city in the US or India.