DSDM® - Agile Project Management - a (still) unknown alternative full of advantages


Book Description

Everyone is talking about agility and praising it as THE approach for successful project management. However, many approaches offer hardly any methods for external steering, budgeting, reporting, controlling. Many only cover the development process and leave it to the users to add further parts as needed. This repeatedly leads to the desire for hybrid project management, which combines agile development with project control and planning. However, most hybrid approaches are patchwork. Different philosophies are cobbled together, some of which contradict each other. DSDM® is different here. The method is completely based on agile approaches, but not only covers production, but also offers project planning, project steering and controlling, risk management and reporting with a goal-oriented role and responsibility management. In this booklet, the book author, himself an expert in DSDM® for many years, offers the reader a good overview of the method and shows why many more companies should get to grips with it.




Managing Agile


Book Description

This book examines agile approaches from a management perspective by focusing on matters of strategy, implementation, organization and people. It examines the turbulence of the marketplace and business environment in order to identify what role agile management has to play in coping with such change and uncertainty. Based on observations, personal experience and extensive research, it clearly identifies the fabric of the agile organization, helping managers to become agile leaders in an uncertain world. The book opens with a broad survey of agile strategies, comparing and contrasting some of the major methodologies selected on the basis of where they lie on a continuum of ceremony and formality, ranging from the minimalist technique-driven and software engineering focused XP, to the pragmatic product-project paradigm that is Scrum and its scaled counterpart SAFe®, to the comparatively project-centric DSDM. Subsequently, the core of the book focuses on DSDM, owing to the method’s comprehensive elaboration of program and project management practices. This work will chiefly be of interest to all those with decision-making authority within their organizations (e.g., senior managers, line managers, program, project and risk managers) and for whom topics such as strategy, finance, quality, governance and risk management constitute a daily aspect of their work. It will, however, also be of interest to those readers in advanced management or business administration courses (e.g., MBA, MSc), who wish to engage in the management of agile organizations and thus need to adapt their skills and knowledge accordingly.




Agile Project Management For Dummies


Book Description

Flex your project management muscle Agile project management is a fast and flexible approach to managing all projects, not just software development. By learning the principles and techniques in this book, you'll be able to create a product roadmap, schedule projects, and prepare for product launches with the ease of Agile software developers. You'll discover how to manage scope, time, and cost, as well as team dynamics, quality, and risk of every project. As mobile and web technologies continue to evolve rapidly, there is added pressure to develop and implement software projects in weeks instead of months—and Agile Project Management For Dummies can help you do just that. Providing a simple, step-by-step guide to Agile project management approaches, tools, and techniques, it shows product and project managers how to complete and implement projects more quickly than ever. Complete projects in weeks instead of months Reduce risk and leverage core benefits for projects Turn Agile theory into practice for all industries Effectively create an Agile environment Get ready to grasp and apply Agile principles for faster, more accurate development.




Agile Portfolio Management


Book Description

Agile development processes foster better collaboration, innovation, and results. So why limit their use to software projects—when you can transform your entire business? Written by agile-mentoring expert Jochen Krebs, this book illuminates the opportunities—and rewards—of applying agile processes to your overall IT portfolio. Whether project manager, business analyst, or executive—you’ll understand the business drivers behind agile portfolio management. And learn best practices for optimizing results. Use agile processes to align IT and business strategy Adapt and extend core agile processes Orchestrate the collaboration between IT and business vision Eliminate wish-list driven requirements, and manage expectations instead Optimize the balance of projects, resources, and assets in your portfolio Use metrics to communicate project status, quality, even team morale Create a portfolio strategy consistent with the goals of the organization Achieve organizational and process transparency Manage your business with agility—and help maximize the returns!




Introduction to Agile Methods


Book Description

A Thorough Introduction to the Agile Framework and Methodologies That Are Used Worldwide Organizations of all shapes and sizes are embracing Agile methodologies as a way to transform their products, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement. Many people with varying levels of work experience are interested in understanding the architecture and nuances of Agile, but it is difficult to know where to start. Numerous practitioner books are available, but there has never been a single source for unbiased information about Agile methodologies–until now. Introduction to Agile Methods is the place to start for students and professionals who want to understand Agile and become conversant with Agile values, principles, framework, and processes. Authors Sondra Ashmore and Kristin Runyan use academic research and their own experiences with numerous Agile implementations to present a clear description of the essential concepts. They address all key roles and the entire development life cycle, including common roadblocks that must be overcome to be successful. Through the authors’ realistic use cases, practical examples, and thought-provoking interviews with pioneering practitioners, complex concepts are made relatable. No matter what your role or level of experience, this book provides a foundational understanding that can be used to start or enhance any Agile effort. Coverage includes How Agile compares with the Waterfall method and when to use each Why Agile demands a cultural transformation–and how that looks to each participant Comparing various Agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Feature Driven Development (FDD), Lean, and DSDM Understanding the roles within Agile and how they work together to create superior results Agile approaches to requirements gathering, planning, estimating, tracking, reporting, testing, quality, and integration Extending Agile beyond IT




The System Anatomy


Book Description

The number of spectacular development failures in, for example, large software projects remains at an alarmingly high level. In spite of fierce efforts to advance current methods and tools supporting such tasks, there seems to be no radical improvement in sight. This book suggests an alternative approach to the development of complex systems. Technology, methods and tools are still important, but human-centric aspects like common understanding, co-ordination, visualisation, and reduction of complexity, need to be brought to the forefront. The core of the alternative approach is the system anatomy, a means that was invented in the early 1990s by Jack Järkvik, who at that time was working for the Ericsson telecommunication company. Since then, Ericsson has been using the anatomy extensively for managing extremely complex system development tasks. The system anatomy is a simple but powerful image showing the dependencies among capabilities in a system, thereby representing a novel way of conceptualising systems. The book is a collection of chapters from authors who, in one way or another, have been working with the anatomy concept. The intended audience is both practitioners and researchers, who are interested in exploring new perspectives and theoretical frameworks for managing complexity in system development tasks.




Software Projects Secrets


Book Description

Software Project Secrets: Why Software Projects Fail offers a new path to success in the software industry. This book reaches out to managers, developers, and customers who use industry-standard methodologies, but whose projects still struggle to succeed. Author George Stepanek analyzes the project management methodology itself, a critical factor that has thus far been overlooked. He explains why it creates problems for software development projects and begins by describing 12 ways in which software projects are different from other kinds of projects. He also analyzes the project management body of knowledge to discover 10 hidden assumptions that are invalid in the context of software projects.




Agile Software Development Quality Assurance


Book Description

"This book provides the research and instruction used to develop and implement software quickly, in small iteration cycles, and in close cooperation with the customer in an adaptive way, making it possible to react to changes set by the constant changing business environment. It presents four values explaining extreme programming (XP), the most widely adopted agile methodology"--Provided by publisher.




Crystal Clear


Book Description

Carefully researched over ten years and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams is a lucid and practical introduction to running a successful agile project in your organization. Each chapter illuminates a different important aspect of orchestrating agile projects. Highlights include Attention to the essential human and communication aspects of successful projects Case studies, examples, principles, strategies, techniques, and guiding properties Samples of work products from real-world projects instead of blank templates and toy problems Top strategies used by software teams that excel in delivering quality code in a timely fashion Detailed introduction to emerging best-practice techniques, such as Blitz Planning, Project 360o, and the essential Reflection Workshop Question-and-answer with the author about how he arrived at these recommendations, including where they fit with CMMI, ISO, RUP, XP, and other methodologies A detailed case study, including an ISO auditor's analysis of the project Perhaps the most important contribution this book offers is the Seven Properties of Successful Projects. The author has studied successful agile projects and identified common traits they share. These properties lead your project to success; conversely, their absence endangers your project.




The symbiosis between information system project complexity and information system project success


Book Description

Project success is widely covered, and the discourse on project complexity is proliferating. The purpose of this book is to merge and investigate the two concepts within the context of information system (IS) projects and understand the symbiosis between success and complexity in these projects. In this original and innovative research, exploratory modelling is employed to identify the aspects that constitute the success and complexity of projects based on the perceptions of IS project participants. This scholarly book aims at deepening the academic discourse on the relationship between the success and complexity of projects and to guide IS project managers towards improved project performance through the complexity lens. The research methodology stems from the realisation that the complexity of IS projects and its relationship to project success are under-documented. A post positivistic approach is applied in order to accommodate the subjective interpretation of IS-project participants through a quantitative design. The researchers developed an online survey strategy regarding literature concerning the success and complexity of projects. The views of 617 participants are documented. In the book, descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analysis pave the way for identifying the key success and complexity constructs of IS projects. These constructs are used in structural-equation modelling to build various validated and predictive models. Knowledge concerning the success and complexity of projects is mostly generic with little exposure to the field of IS project management. The contribution to current knowledge includes how the success of IS projects should be considered as well as what the complexity constructs of IS projects are. The success of IS projects encompasses strategic success, deliverable success, process success and the ‘unknowns’ of project success. The complexity of IS projects embodies organisational complexity, environmental complexity, technical complexity, dynamics and uncertainty. These constructs of success and complexity are mapped according to their underlying latent relationships to each other. The intended audience of this book is fellow researchers and project and IS specialists, including information technology managers, executives, project managers, project team members, the project management office (PMO), general managers and executives that initiate and conduct project-related work. The work presented in this first edition of the book is original and has not been plagiarised or presented before. It is not a revised version of a thesis or research previously published. Comments resulted from the blind peer review process were carefully considered and incorporated accordingly.