Have you ever tried something new that worked well but you didn’t understand why it was working? When we first started implementing Agile we had tremendous success. For instance, we turned a twice failed custom CRM implementation into a home run for a leading insurance company and had many other similar victories. It really is a great project management tool, but there are still many people who don’t know the basics of Agile.

So here is a brief overview of Agile Project Management and what it accomplishes for you.

Agile Software development is a term coined with the signing of the Agile Manifesto in 2001. At this signing some of the world’s most prominent minds came together to rally against the current “heavyweight” (aka waterfall) development methods at the time. From this genesis Agile emerged as a legitimate alternative development methodology. Today Agile adoption is spreading like wildfire and even organizations, such as the Project Management Institute are starting to take notice.

The term Agile refers to a family of methodologies including; Extreme Programming, Lean, Scrum, etc. According to the latest industry data, Scrum enjoys the largest market share at 49.1% (Version One “The State of Agile Development” 3rd Annual Survey: 2008). Each methodology has its own unique differences, however all Agile methodologies share the following characteristics:
• Develop the highest value features first
• Short iterations, frequent releases
• Fixed resources and time, scope remains variable
• High visibility, high bandwidth communication (aka face-to-face)
• Small cross-functional, self-managing teams
• Inspecting and adapting (continuous improvement)

Author, Blogger, speaker and founder of The Braintrust Consulting Group, Brian M. Rabon, CSM, CSP, MSEE, PMP, has successfully implemented both Extreme Programming and Scrum at multiple companies and experienced firsthand the benefits that Agile Project Management can bring. Brian also consults with businesses large and small in order to align their project management efforts around delivery and providing business value. For more information please visit http://www.yourpmpartner.com to learn the combination to unlocking a true return on your project management investment.

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Project management (PM) is a well planned approach for a process from start to end. It is concerned with the planning and guiding of the project from start to finish. Any process needs to be guide in usually five stages. They are initiation, planning, execution, controlling and closing. PM can be applied to almost all type of projects but especially it is applicable in software development projects to control the complex process. It is an organized effort and it is planned very carefully. To accomplish a specific project, PM is essential.

PM is handled by project manager to implement the project successfully towards its goal. For successful completion of any project it is necessary to have a proper PM. The main objective of the PM is to attain its goal successfully.

Numbers of approaches are there to manage the activities of the project. They are:

The traditional approach-This approach aims towards the completion of the project in sequence or in traditional manner. For the completion of the project there are five stages in this approach. They are:

* The stage of initiation
* The stage of design or planning
* The stage of production or execution
* Monitoring and controlling systems
* The stage of completion

Extreme PM- To execute project task, the critical chain project management give more emphasis to human and physical resources. By this method of planning and managing projects all the constraints are exploited and priority is also given to it. In critical chain project management all the projects are planned and managed only when the resources are ready.

Extreme PM- Complex type of project is handled in extreme PM. In this PM experts always try to identify the different models which is ‘light weight’ such as Agile Project Management.

Scrum techniques and extreme programming for the development of software are used in this method. It is the combination of management of human interaction and process modeling.

Event chain methodology- The complement to the critical path method and the methodologies of critical chain project management is another method that is Event chain methodology. This PM deals with the model of uncertainty. The main focus of this management is towards identifying and managing the events or the chain of events which will affect the schedule of the project. Event chain methodology follows the following principles:

* Event chains
* Tracking with events
* Probabilistic moment of risk
* Tracking with events
* Event chain visualization

Copyright © Ryan Mutt, All Rights Reserved. If you want to use this article on your website or in your ezine, make all the urls (links) active.

Read information on ERP Project Management and Definition of ERP.

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You have purchased a great domain name, designed a cool site with great page load times, and have it hosted with a quality web host. Your site is ready for the first visit from Google, beginning the quest for high page rank. Here are five easy tips to get you on the right track.

1. Submit your site. Google bots are busy crawling the millions of established sites that have already been published. They appreciate being notified that there is a new site to see. When you are sure you page does not contain any spelling, grammar, or link errors, submit your site to Google to invite to the web spider to visit.

2. Submit a sitemap. Google offers this free service to help the spiders crawl through your site. Once Google spiders the URL of your sitemap, it can easily visit all your pages quickly and thoroughly, which gets your site indexed properly. Check their webmaster tools to learn how to set up your sitemap and submit it to Google.

3. Use quality content. Include content that is important to your visitors. Google is a search engine, faithful to the visitor that is searching for information. They hold no loyalty to the website owner. They will rank your site higher if the content is useful and applicable.

4. Use fresh content. If your site includes information that is updated frequently, visitors will appreciate it, and therefore Google will. It is pretty sad to see a latest news heading on a website, and the news is from three years ago. Write an article, announce some news, or review a company — keep it current.

5. Get linked. One of the most important things you can do to be rated higher in Google’s eyes is have other high ranked sites think you are important. Get your site’s URL listed on a quality website, that is, one that complements your keywords and site content. One great way to do this is submit your site to a quality reciprocal link directory. Link directories such as Excite Link [http://excitelink.com/] list quality companies and services for searching visitors.

These tips will give you a great start on ranking high with Google. Always keep active in your research of current do’s and dont’s of search engine optimization, and keep track of your experiments. Like my piano teacher used to say — practice makes perfect.

Elizabeth Worsham is a the design director for Extreme Programming [http://extreme-programming.com]. She and her husband Eric own WebCom Resources, a family of successful Internet services.

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Any business needs some management solutions to get organized and stay on the floating line. Unfortunately, many organizations are forced to rely on paper trails and email-chains. These outdated methods were replaced by newer project management solutions.

There are different types of such solutions for a wide range of working domains and for many kinds of needs. The access to accurate, real-time data regarding projects and resources is crucial to making strategic business decisions. Companies must keep up with the changes that impact the day-to-day running of their business. Managers are expected to deliver more than ever – but with fewer resources, within a shorter period of time and to produce maximum returns for the business.

Many times all this work gets externalized to other specialized entities. This covers either the use of project management tools or even more the delegation of entire work to management and consulting companies. In all cases appropriate methodologies and processes are necessary to be applied.

Project management solutions

In order to make the best decisions to support your organization’s long-term goals, you have to decide and choose the right management solution:

* Resource management – if you have a resource oriented activity this is the solution on which you should insist on. In most cases it is strongly connected with work management software
* Project portfolio – this type of solution is the most used in any domain. Any company has multiple projects that need to be managed
* Issue tracking – best suited for software development companies
* Task management – many small and medium organizations resort to this kind of solution; task management software is used mainly because of the ease of use, simplicity and light collaboration features

These are just some of the most encountered and known types. However as domains overlap a single type of product is not enough. This is why huge companies reached the need to use ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems that incorporate all the above and much more beyond the project management area.

Project management methodologies and processes

The definition for terms like methodology and process and what it clearly represents is under debate and there is no unique agreement in the management domain. However they are successfully used and many management solutions try to map on a certain methodology.

Here is a list with the most used ones:

* Traditional project management respecting the project’s five stages – initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and completion
* The Critical Path Method
* Critical Chain Project Management
* Event Chain Methodology

Other newer methodologies, processes and frameworks more specific to the IT industry:

* Agile
* Six Sigma
* Scrum
* Extreme Programming (XP)
* Crystal
* Feature Driven Development (FDD)
* Dynamic Systems Development (DSDM)
* Adaptive Software Development
* Rational Unified Process (RUP)
* PRINCE2

It is imperative to select the right project management solution in order to meet your organization’s needs and to maximize the return on investment. A well defined methodology and process applied on a project management software might be the key to your business success.

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The agile software company has increased and raised in the market today. It has brought about more focus on the agile software development, where methods on developments of software are grouped and based on the iterative and incremental developments. It is of great importance, since with the use of this software, it has enhanced and promoted adaptive planning. They are on the aim of how to make more investments, attracting more customers on the use of adopting agile software, to improve delivery effectiveness.

The company also has brought about evolutionary development and delivery effectiveness, which is timed as interactive approach and encourages rapid and flexible respond to change. They develop product chain management solutions, with the use of agile software, hence enabling manufacturers and partners involved in business to build on better, more profitable products in a faster and more efficient way. It has a manifesto that tends guide the entire organization, in providing and inventing better ways of developing the software. By doing this, the companies are able to involve in strategic ways of developing the software in various ways, such as by providing training to the agile customers and other companies on the usefulness of the software. Coaching is another method, used by many other agile software companies, to pass on the information, or rather the advantageous of using agile as an IT resource. The agile industry is able to offer consultancy on a mode of helping other software companies, as well as consumers, to support agile and hence adopt the changes, brought about by the software to the IT market today. There are steps involved in the process of developing software, which are considered by the company to be ways of building and modifying the software more.

The agile methods include agile modeling, agile unified process which is AUP, dynamic system development method, essential unified process, extreme programming, feature driven development, open unified process, scrum and velocity tracking. These methods are rather the most used and preferred, this is because the processes involved are quite efficient for the advancement of the agile software.

The agile software has a development life cycle support of how it came to being in existence; this is best explained by the use of agile methods, which tend to focused on different aspects to bring about the software. With the use of this cycle, agile has brought about the solutions that tend to drive the product innovation, and introduction process. Focus has been kept by the agile software company on the practices such as extreme programming, pragmatic programming, agile modeling among others; the company has also focused on the managing software’s projects or rather the scrum.

Among the methods used to develop agile, there are approaches that tend to give full coverage on the advancement, while others are suited from requirements to a specified phase on the development life cycle of the software. The measure of quantify agile software has been an issue, hence many approaches has been brought forward so as to measure its quantity. The practical application of quantifying agile has not yet been seen, but with the proposed agility measuring index the score projects have been achieved by a number of factors such as, duration, risk involved, novelty, effort and as well as interaction. With the use of this and other techniques involved, the agile software company has based all this on measurable goals, as well as by the use of agile self assessments to determine if another group uses agile practices.

The large-scale of agile software evolvement remains an active research area; this is because of the suitability of the certain types of environment, such as including small teams of experts in the development. Although there are factors that undermine the agile software company and its advancement, it has still adopted the agile methods for its evolvement. These company is a fast growing and leading company, that provides IT services to clients globally, including serving clients from the Indian origin as well.

While conducting a search for Agile Software Company over the web, I found this site http://www.dotnear.com/agile-practices.

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Abstract:

The IBM Rational Unified Process® (RUP®) is a complete software-development process framework that comes with several out-of-the-box instances. Processes derived from RUP vary from lightweight addressing the needs of small projects with short product cycles-to more comprehensive processes addressing the broader needs of large, possibly distributed project teams. Projects of all types and sizes have successfully used RUP. This white paper describes how to apply RUP in a lightweight manner to small projects. We describe how to effectively apply extreme Programming (XP) techniques within the broader context of a complete project.

Inception

Inception is significant for new development efforts, where you must address important business and requirement risks before the project can proceed. For projects focused on enhancements to an existing system, the Inception phase is shorter, but is still focused on ensuring that the project is both worth doing and possible. During Inception, you make the business case for building the software. The Vision is a key artifact produced during Inception. It is a high-level description of the system. It tells everyone what the system is, and may also tell who will use it, why it will be used, what features must be present and what constraints 1 XP defines three phases: Exploration, Commitment, and Steering. These do not map well to RUP phases so we choose to use the four RUP phases to describe the process exist. The Vision may be very short, perhaps only a paragraph or two. Often the Vision contains the critical features the software must provide to the customer.

Four essential Inception activities specified in RUP are:

o Formulate the scope of the project.

o Plan and prepare the business case.

o Synthesize candidate architecture.

o Prepare the project environment.

Elaboration

The goal of the Elaboration phase is to baseline the architecture of the system to provide a stable basis for the bulk of the design and implementation effort in the Construction phase. The architecture evolves out of a consideration of the most significant requirements (those that have a great impact on the architecture of the system) and an assessment of risk. The stability of the architecture is evaluated through one or more architectural prototypes.

In RUP, design activities focus on the notion of system architecture and, for software-intensive systems, software architecture. Using component architectures is one of the six best practices of software development embodied in RUP, which recommends spending time developing and maintaining the architecture. The time spent on this effort mitigates the risks associated with a brittle and inflexible system. XP replaces the notion of architecture by “metaphor.” The metaphor captures part of the architecture, whereas the rest of the architecture evolves as a natural result of code development. XP assumes that architecture emerges from producing the simplest design and continually refactoring the code.

“IRM is the view of the enterprise from 50,000 feet.”

- Bryce’s Law

INTRODUCTION

Years ago I was visiting a large manufacturing company headquartered
in Connecticut where I was making a presentation on our “PRIDE” Methodologies
for IRM. I thought I had a done a pretty good job of explaining the basic
concept of Information Resource Management, but the IT Director was having
a problem comprehending it. He said, “Tim, what I’m looking for is the ability
to know where all of our plants and offices are throughout the Atlantic seaboard,
what their systems are, and the data they use.” Then, elevating his hand over
his head like an airplane, he continued, “I want a view of the enterprise from
50,000 feet.”

I told him he had just succinctly described the concept of IRM and I have been
using this expression ever since. (I also got the contract shortly thereafter). IRM
is the global view of an enterprise’s information resources, including its business,
systems, and data components. I have described this concept in-depth in past
bulletins, see:

No. 12 – “Understanding the IRM/MRP Analogy” – February 21, 2005

http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/ss050221.pdf

TYING IT ALL TOGETHER

What concerns me lately is how the industry seems to have developed distinctly
separate approaches for such things as:

* Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
* Information Architecture
* Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
* Agile/Extreme Programming
* Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
* Data Mining
* Enterprise Architecture
* Project Management
* Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
* Data Base Design
* Programmer Workbenches
* Business Rules
* Process Management
* Quality Assurance
* DBMS
* SDLC/Waterfall Methods

All have developed their own unique market niche complete with conferences, books,
magazines, and self-proclaimed gurus. All are segregated into separate fiefdoms
with little, if any, interfaces between any of them. It seems strange to me they
do not work together harmoniously in a cohesive manner. Frankly, we tend to
make things more complicated than they need to be.

I tend to believe this is caused because the industry takes a rather myopic view of
things. Basically, all of these efforts started out as rather simple ideas which have
been refined and marketed as the panacea du jour. I am reminded of IBM’s
efforts in the 1980′s with AD/Cycle who made a futile attempt to develop an integrated
development environment. The reason for it’s failure was primarily due to the
lack of cooperation between the participating vendors to agree upon standards for
developing a unified environment. And frankly, as competitors, it was not in their
best interest to do so. To do so might impact their competitive advantage. Interestingly,
AD/Cycle and most of the vendors who participated in the project have moved on,
but the problem of an integrated environment has not.

Unlike the IT Director mentioned earlier, very few people want to see the
“big picture.” Instead, people in the industry have evolved into taking a tool-oriented
approach for solving problems. In other words, the only problems seemingly worth
addressing are those that can be conquered by the tools they are currently
using. Anything outside of their scope is considered irrelevant and “someone else’s
problem.” This is like having an orchestra without a maestro; all of the instruments
play well but not in a concerted manner (and believe me, this is not a concert we
would pay to see).

The objective of any CIO or IT Director is to create a homogeneous development
environment as opposed to the heterogeneous environment just described. Doing
so allows the staff to row on the same oar and not in opposing directions.

So, what is the common bond? Another new tool or technique? Hardly. Instead
a very simple concept: Information Resource Management. IRM is more about
management than it is about technology. In fact, it is a philosophy of management;
a way of thinking, a management approach (not tool-oriented) to design and control
resources to satisfy the information requirements of an enterprise. Ultimately, it
represents organization, discipline and accountability. Like the comment about
“50,000 feet,” IRM requires a new perspective, one derived from the fundamentals
of manufacturing and engineering. It begins with a belief that a system is a product that can be engineered and manufactured like any other product. If you can buy into
this belief, than synchronizing all of the disciplines is not only feasible, it is highly likely.

CONCLUSION

In this industry, we tend to worry about the wrong things. This is like rearranging the
deck chairs on the Titanic. Instead, we should take a more global perspective on
the problem, organize ourselves accordingly and conquer it. To do so does not
require the use of any particular tool or technique. Instead, we have to climb
up upon the mountain, look down, and chart a course of action. This is what
Information Resource Management is all about. Its not about mastering
a specific instrument, its about orchestration. But this can only happen if we
define and standardize our concepts and terminology and turn IRM from an
art to a science. Together, we can create a symphony.

Tim Bryce is the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA) of Palm Harbor, Florida and has 30 years of experience in the field. He is available for training and consulting on an international basis. He can be contacted at timb001@phmainstreet.com.

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In the late 1990′s a lot of software developers started seeking for an alternative option for a traditional software development methodologies, which were as a rule based upon waterfall model. By the start of 2001 a group of experts has formulated basic principles of lightweight technologies, which are now known as agile software development. Key elements of the agile development philosophy are as following:

• Focus on human resources involved into the project, including both buyers and providers. Successful teamwork of correctly selected specialists is considered to be a pledge of future project success.

• Shift from formal specification to effective communication. Discussions and feedback make a basic line in communication between the team and the buyer, as well as within the team

• Iterative development with maximally short duration of every single iteration, each of them resulting in release of fully-functional product version.

• Flexibility towards changes – at the first stage of work on project the team does not set up a set of severe requirements to follow a strict plan. In agile development environment changes can be made at any project stage.

Extreme programming is one of the most wide-spread methodologies of agile software development. Its main principles were formulated in 1996 by Kent Beck as an attempt to recover a failing project of the accounting system for one of the giants of automobile industry. It did not help the project, however XP methodology has already gained popularity and lots of software development teams have chosen it as a leading methodology.

Extreme programming methodology inherits all basic principles of agile software development. But there are a few specific practices that belong to this agile software development methodology:

1. A representative of the buyer is working as a part of a project team. He possesses all necessary information about key product functionality; he sets the priorities among requirements and evaluates the product quality.

2. User stories are short informal descriptions of system use cases. For Extreme programming user stories are, along with acceptance tests, the only way to specify the requirements. All other information is obtained directly from the buyer.

3. Test driven development – unit tests are of a key importance for the project developed on a basis of agile software development. A new portion of code can be developed only to increase an amount of successful unit tests. In fact, it means that before developing a new function a corresponding test should be prepared, and development of this specific part of code should be completed only after the start of passing new and all already existing tests.

4. System architecture should be as simple as possible. Extreme programming idea does not recommend planning in regards to possible future upgrades. Ideally, it should only support existing functionality.

5. Code refactoring is required in terms of constant changes in system architecture. Collective working on code is encouraged by Extreme programming. Possible bugs caused by refactoring are detected by unit tests.

6. All changes in code should get into the main repository immediately after passing tests, which allows avoiding integration stage.

7. Pair programming is one of the most contradictory practices of Extreme programming. It is supposed to increase general effectiveness of the process and to reduce the amount of bugs.

8. A weekly working time should not exceed 40 hours. This practice is intended to increase performance of the project team due to decreased stress and exhaustion.

Having chosen agile development software teams switch to larger scale of flexibility and communication. To a large extend, Extreme programming was created as an attempt to describe the processes and practices that appear themselves in effective and consolidated developers. This factor greatly influences the terms, which are necessary for successful implementation of Extreme programming methodology. In comparison to other agile software development practices, Extreme programming has certain restrictions: the developers team should not be split into few parts; it can work successfully only in groups of high-skilled professionals; it is necessary to have a representative of the Buyer’s side working on the project, which is sometimes challenging; it is not recommended for fixed-price projects due to washed off project timeframe.

However, regardless of above-mentioned restrictions, Extreme programming can successfully be applied in favorable conditions. Due to extremely low budget spends, this agile software development practice may demonstrate a high efficiency level.

The article author is full-time professional information technology writer, primarily covering agile development methodologies. The author has published writings on, bug tracker systems, agile development software, agile tools, practices and iterative development.

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