Speaker 1: Hey everyone, my name is Ishan and I welcome you all to this session. In this session, we will be talking about agile project management and several other things related to it. Before we begin, let's have a look at all the topics we will be covering today. First we will see the basics of agile project management. Then we will check the relevance and principles of agile project management. We will then see necessary steps to implement agile methodology. Along with that, we shall also see different frameworks involved in the process. And finally, we shall see some companies that use agile project management. So without any further ado, let's get started with what is agile project management. Agile project management, as the name suggests, is a flexible approach to building a project. In agile project management, the project is broken down into several stages or sprints. Agile does not work on the principle of delivering the final product at the end of the project. It works on delivering sections of a project or mini projects. The process of project management in the case of agile is agile based. So there won't be any central control of project manager as it was there in the traditional way of working. Before we move forth, let's have a look at the agile development cycle. Agile methodologies consist of several small cycles or sprints. At the end of each stage, we get a mini project. There's a product backlog that explains new features, changes in the existing features and several other improvements in the project. Then we have a sprint backlog, which has a list of tasks that are to be completed during each sprint. The sprint consists of planning, designing, execution, testing and deployment stages. And at the end of each sprint, a mini project is delivered. With every sprint, new features are added to the product, which plays a significant role in the overall project growth. After all the sprints and early validation in the development, a final deliverable has a fewer chances of failure. Let's now have a look at some reasons why industries have started moving towards agile project management. The first reason is high product quality. When we talk about high product quality, we refer to the build of the product as per stakeholder's demands. Testing is performed at short intervals of time wherever needed to ensure high quality of the product. Then another reason is customer satisfaction. Whatever is done in the project is known by the customer. The deliveries don't take longer durations as they used to take in the case of traditional ways. The changes may be provided by the customer in the execution phase of the project. Third reason is reduced risk. Since the project is divided into sprints, so if the risk affects one sprint, it doesn't mean whole of the project will be at risk. The process of risk analysis continues to take place with all the other processes. Another significant reason for agile project management is better and faster return on investment. The project is now developed in several sprints and each sprint has its own version. Therefore, the project becomes market ready after a few sprints only. Since the projects can now be released with ease and in shorter duration, this helps the organization to stay ahead in competition with respect to other organizations which are still not moved to agile methodology. Now we shall check the principles of agile project management. There are 10 principles for successful agile project management. The first principle is the satisfaction of the customer by delivering the project fast and with least number of errors. The next principle refers to decreasing the amount of time between the phase of planning and delivery. The third principle states that the team of managers and developers work together and increase the productivity of their work. The next principle states that the changes requested by the stakeholders can be taken into consideration and worked upon during the development phase as well. The fifth principle pays attention to the factor of coordination among the team members. Then the sixth principle refers to the process of monitoring and tracking the progress of the project at the end of each sprint and making amendments wherever needed. Moving on, the next principle states that there must be a feeling of trust and support towards the team to complete the project's objectives. The next principle emphasizes on face-to-face conversations with the development team. The face-to-face conversation helps in both solving problems and easy knowledge sharing. Then the ninth principle emphasizes on finding solutions and maximizing the amount of work done with simplicity. This ensures timely completion of tasks by all the team members. The last principle states that scrum tools like monday.com or Zoho sprints must be used to simplify the complicated codes, which further helps in saving time. We shall now see the steps in agile project management. The goal of agile methodology is to produce shorter development life cycles and more frequent product releases than traditional waterfall project management. So we will now check six steps in agile project methodology. The first step in the process is project planning. Project planning includes feasibility study, development of scope, breaking the project into executable tasks or sprints, and then estimating the amount of time needed to complete those sprints. The second step is the step of roadmap creation. A roadmap is a plan of action that shows how a project shall evolve over time. A list of all the features that the final product should have is created and the steps to achieve those features are taken. The next important step is release planning. Since we are doing the project, keeping in mind the agile project methodology, the project will complete in sprints. That means there will be the release of features at the end of each cycle. And unlike the traditional waterfall model, the development cycles will be smaller. The fourth step in agile project management is sprint planning. The sprints are made keeping in mind what all is to be accomplished in that particular step. At the beginning of each sprint, the goal of that sprint is decided and steps to achieve that goal are taken. The next step in the process emphasizes on daily meetings. There are short meetings every day to discuss if the team was able to finish the task for each sprint and check if there are any amendments that are required. Each team member talks about what they achieved in the last sprint and what are they going to work on in the next sprint. The last step is the step of sprint review and retrospective. There are two meetings after each sprint. First meeting is for the sprint review. This meeting is with the stakeholders to show them the finished product. This helps both sides to build a relationship and discuss if there are any issues in the end product. The second meeting is for having a sprint retrospective. This meeting involves the stakeholders to discuss what went well and what went wrong during the sprint. Sprint retrospective takes place after the sprint review and before the next sprint planning. Now when we know the steps needed for agile project methodology, we must understand some agile project management frameworks. There are several frameworks available today. In this video, we will be discussing some of the most popular frameworks. The first framework we will discuss is the Kanban framework. Kanban framework is a well-known framework for implementing agile software development. In the case of Kanban framework, work items are represented on the Kanban board, which helps all the team members to see the state of every piece of work at any time. Kanban board not only helps in visualizing the work but also optimizing the workflow among the team. The next framework we will discuss today is the scrum framework. Scrum framework is a popular framework for managing complex knowledge work like in the field of research and advanced technologies. Scrum is a simple framework that helps team work together and learn through their experiences gained while working on a problem. The third framework we will see today is the hybrid framework. The hybrid framework is a combination of agile methodology and non-agile methodology. In the case of a hybrid framework, planning is done using the traditional way of project management while the execution and delivery is done using the agile methodology. Since the hybrid is a combination of the two, it handles the requirement changes and delivers the product in different stages. The fourth and the last framework we will see is the lean framework. The lean framework works on the principle of providing maximum customer value and creating zero waste. It focuses on optimizing the flow of products all through the value stream. This helps in eliminating waste all through the process and create processes that requires less human efforts. This also simplifies the process of information management and makes it more accurate. Finally, let's have a look at some companies that have opted for agile project management. Today, around 22% of the organizations worldwide have all their teams working on the principle of agile project methodology. Let's have a look at some of the most prominent companies in the world that use agile project management. In the list, we have IBM, Cisco, AT&T, Microsoft, Philips, and Samsung. And with this, we have come to the end of this session. I hope you guys found it informative and helpful. Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more from Simply Learn.