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Group Assignment 1

Dwight Longchallon,

Matthew Lewis,

Albert LoMonaco,

Aameel Mohammed,

Christian Llerena,

Roy Hutton

Broward College

ISM4318C: Agile Project Management

Professor Victor Arenas

Introduction

Many software projects began as far back as the late 1960’s. However, the technology age

accelerated the software industry to grow at unprecedented speed. As a result, many companies

were able to see a potential for software production as a business due to hardware costs

decreasing significantly. In addition, the old linear model that was being used resulted in major

project failures due to unrealistic project goals and poor estimates. (Charette, 2005). A new

model was needed that would be more adaptable with the rapidly changing landscape of software

and its development. As a result, Agile was developed for software potential benefits (Serrador

& Pinto, 2015). It carried greater flexibility and adaptability in software development. Presently,

agile project management (APM) is becoming the new de facto standard for developing software

(Henriksen, 2016).

Foundation for Adaptive Leadership

Various techniques in APM enable teams to think about how to optimize the flow of

value. These approaches or practices are determined based on the situation and used by teams to

evolve project life cycles. Journey mapping involves analyzing customer experiences with a

product or service. It is a visualization concept also known as user experience (UX). This

customer-centric approach focuses on learning about customers’ thoughts and feelings which

allows the opportunity to enhance a product. By understanding what keeps a customer loyal,

developers and designers can really start hearing their customers' feedback (O'Connel, 2018).

Lean product management changes traditional approaches by working from the outside

in. The highest priority is placed on hypothesizing customer needs while defining the minimum

viable product. It requires good solid data to help companies understand the problems that its

customers are facing and how to feed that information into their product roadmaps.
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Adaptive thinking and collaboration

The digital transformation refers to the merging of businesses and digital technology.

Almost every area of business is integrated with the digital world. Businesses are at risk of

becoming irrelevant if they fail to adapt to this digital transformation. Teams are enhanced

through competencies, like technical maturity and cross collaboration, thus improving the ability

to perform their jobs even better.

Agile mindsets involve approaching the task in a more personal way to quickly get to the

main point. Values include individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working

software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation

[ CITATION Bec01 \l 1033 ]. The idea is we accomplish more quality work if working together

with emphasis on the outcome, rather than working within a technocratic hierarchy that values

itself over the impact of its product.

Adaptive thinking in practice means learning to respond quickly to constant change.

Situational adaptability comes from lessons learned and curiosity. With more teams becoming

virtualized and geographically diverse, the need for cross cultural competency and establishing

good communication is more important than ever before.

Agile Management

Teams are empowered through guidelines to work within. It allows a mutually beneficial

relationship to be created between team members and their leaders. Setting boundaries, trusting

in your team, and asking compelling questions are three key topics for team empowerment.

Guidelines give a sense of direction team members can follow to achieve individual goals that

ultimately roll up to team success. Evolving with the ever-changing workforce, we are now in an
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era where we should be challenging our teams with the same questions we previously would

resolve on our own.

Agile project management as an approach can be broken down into several different

layers. The major goal is to distribute responsibilities to ensure each task is managed by the right

team member thereby avoiding mismanagement of tasks. Product owners oversee the scope,

schedule, and cost of the project to ensure it achieves its goals. The team is then responsible for

managing risk, quality, and tasks.

As agile leaders, we must be able to adapt to change. Four key capabilities include living

your set vision and aligning your behavior to those beliefs. This, in turn, will motivate teams and

help establish leadership credibility. Agile leaders think adaptively and sometimes can require

unlearning what is known to achieve unique goals. An example is to take an objective look at

you own reactions, decisions, and behaviors which can help develop personal growth. Next is to

instill alignment through understanding of chosen strategies for task management. It could be

that you may need to ask questions repeatedly to truly clarify the mission. Lastly, we reintroduce

team empowerment into this approach. By exhibiting trust in your team, you empower your

team. This allows the team to succeed, fail and continuously try to achieve the desired objectives

in a safe environment (O'Connel, 2018).

Finally, a culture of measurement and growth focuses more on the importance of how

you measure and who is engaged in the process. A company creates this culture by helping teams

understand why metrics are important to the success of a business. Metrics are made achievable

by collecting data and finding new ways to solve problems through collaboration and sharing

across the organization. By democratizing the metrics this creates a high-performance culture of

successful growth (O'Connel, 2018).

References

Beck, K. (2001). The Agile Manifesto. Agile Alliance. Retrieved from [Link]

Henriksen, A. (2016). Agile project management - a case study on agile projects.

10.13140/RG.2.2.14048.33283.

O'Connel, K. (2018, June 29). Agile Leaders. Retrieved from Linkedin inLearning :

[Link]

O'Connel, K. (2018, June 29). Culture of measurement and growth - Adaptive Project

Leadership. Retrieved from Linkedin inLearning:

[Link]

and-growth?u=2337506

O'Connel, K. (2018, June 29). Journey Mapping. Retrieved from Linkedin inLearning:

[Link]

u=2337506

Serrador, P., & Pinto, J. (2015). Does Agile work? — A quantitative analysis of agile project

success. International Journal of Project Management.