A tried and tested corporate approach

The AgilePM methodology is essentially a project manager’s subset of the Agile Business Consortium’s wider Agile Project Framework. The framework, established for over 20 years and regularly refreshed to reflect current practices and business requirements, provides governance and rigour along with the agility and flexibility demanded by organisations today.  Consequently, a wide range  of organisations across many industries and sectors have adopted AgilePM and the underlying Agile Project Framework.

Addressing the full project lifecycle (beyond product development

Often the informality of many of the agile approaches is daunting and sometimes perceived as too risky for organisations delivering projects and programmes.  However, AgilePM offers a mature approach that, whilst offering agility and flexibility, retains the concepts of a project, project delivery and project management.

Inclusion of change management activities

AgilePM goes further than other project management approaches, because it uses specific processes to consider how to implement the deliverables.

This deployment step is integral to the AgilePM lifecycle and ensures that there is a focus on how to support users once the deliverables are available.

Quality & governance controls

One of AgilePM’s underlying principles is Never Compromise Quality.

Firstly, agreement of high-level acceptance criteria  occurs throughout the AgilePM project lifecycle.  This initially is defined at the feasibility stage before objectives for each stage of product/solution development. Secondly, the responsibility for ensuring the outputs meet quality criteria is a core part of all roles; so everyone knows what the standard should look like as quality expectations are understood before any work is undertaken. This is a far more efficient approach than rejecting work after it has been created as it prevents rejection of unclear requirements. Collectively, this is geared to ensuring the solution will meet the business need and the project objectives.

Risk management in AgilePM

AgilePM provides practical ideas for managing risk which directly address many of the common risks for projects. Above all, this includes preventing missing fixed deadlines or having unclear and volatile requirements.

The Project Approach Questionnaire (PAQ) provides a clear, shared understanding of project risks and their mitigation.

AgilePM recognises that people working together effectively are the foundation of any successful project above all by assigning clear roles and responsibilities to each person in a project.  In other words, these roles represent the business interests, the solution/ technical interests, the management interests and the process interests. Therefore, everyone involved in an AgilePM project works closely together breaking down potential communication barriers and by acknowledging  the best solutions emerging from self-organizing, empowered teams.

Popular agile practices incorporated in AgilePM

AgilePM incorporates and encourages a range of popular agile practices to support effective product and solution development.

These include:

Firstly, MoSCoW Prioritisation provides a technique for helping to understand and manage priorities.  Secondly, Time-boxing, ensures that objectives met in a fixed period of time. Thirdly, Iterative Development, is a process in which the evolving solution, or part of it, evolves from a high-level concept to something with acknowledged business value.  In conclusion, these practices ensure that focus is maintained on the delivery of value throughout the project.

Integrated with existing processes:

Agile PM works alongside more formalised project management and quality approaches e.g. frameworks such as PRINCE2® and  ISO9001.