47% of IT orgs use DevSecOps for software development. Also, 37% use Scrum & 34% use Kanban agile project management to deliver their products to the market. The highlight here is from project management to software development, agile methodologies are ruling the IT & software industry. Possibly, you too would be planning to adopt agile methodologies. Or maybe, you already do agile and secretly wish to get expert help to implement agile methodologies the right way.
Well, we heard you.
Go through this insight to discover the 10-point project management checklist for Agile teams delivering crazy outcomes.
Why do you need a checklist for Agile project management?
Faster time to market, better security & code quality, improved communication, collaboration, & productivity are the glittery outcomes of going the agile way for your next software project. But it gets really tricky for a new team (let’s say ‘inexperienced’) to put the pieces of the agile puzzle in the right places. This is where process & structure kicks in and helps tackle the challenges in a systematic & efficient way. An agile project management checklist helps you tick all the boxes to successfully execute your project plans. So, what do you think? Do you need an agile project management checklist? Yes, you do.
Agile project management checklist
1. Buy-in from all stakeholders
What Alexander The Great was to the world, Waterfall is to the IT industry. Rulers.
But kingdoms fell, and so did the waterfall model. It doesn’t fit the cloud era of development. Gone redundant, but yet popular — The waterfall model.
No matter which part of the world you reside in, no matter which org you work for — high chances are that at least a few people in your team have the waterfall background. And trust us, it is not easy to adapt to agile while coming from a legacy project management system like a waterfall.
When Agile teams are formed, please crosscheck & verify that every member of the team understands and aligns with the agile way of product development. Else, there can be fallouts in the later stages of the project, which is not at all a sweet thing to experience. Buy-in from all members is quintessential, esp from the board members & decision influencers. Neglecting this could cripple the project in terms of time-to-market and cost explosion.
Who are the stakeholders in agile project management?
- Clients
- Vendors
- Internal management
- Cross-department leaders related to the agile project under consideration
- The project team i.e., members who would work on developing the actual product.
2. Organize your team
Agile is all about iterative bite-sized continuous feature releases , and so are agile teams. When you start, try gaining a high-level idea of who will be working on the project and what your team would look like. Know that new members are onboarded in an agile project on a need basis, and old members leave if the intended responsibility is delivered. The agile team itself, just like the project, evolves iteratively. In fact, I must say, nothing on this agile project management checklist is a hard and fast rule. This agile project management checklist can be modified based on the specifics of your project needs.
Find the right talent for-
- Product owner — who can shoulder the responsibility of meeting the project’s vision.
- Scrummaster — who can work alongside the design & development team to tick the backlog items.
- Developers & designers — who can translate ideas into design, and design into digital products.
3. Choose your agile methodology
If you read our insight on “What is agile project management?”, you may already know about the different agile project methodologies that exist-
- Scrum
- Kanban
- XP (Extreme programming),
- Scrumban,
- LSD (Lean software development),
- APF (adaptive project framework),
- FDD (feature-driven development), and
- Hybrid of agile & waterfall approach.
Among these, select the agile method that best suits your project needs. Compatibility matters. You must consider the abilities of your tentative team that you have planned among several other factors that you may consider in choosing the right agile method suited to the project requirement. You may also need to revisit the planned team composition based on your chosen agile methodology.
4. Kickoff & strategy meeting to flexibly freeze the vision & scope
Agile projects go on back and forth — at times cyclic iterations and sometimes random. It is easy to get drifted, confused, and lose interest in the project. Setting up a clear vision i.e., the outcome expected from the project, and a clear scope of work — make things a cakewalk. Bye-bye escalations.
5. Design the Agile Project Roadmap
After the kickoff meeting, the team has a clear picture of what’s expected. Here’s the agile project management checklist for detailing the vision & outcomes on Boards, planning project execution, and designing systems & processes for timely delivery of the product-
- Prepare user stories, or features catalog i.e., product backlog
- Plot product burndown
- Estimate the time for each of the user stories & the required resources
- Estimate budget
- Prioritize each of the backlog items
- Decide on Sprint length
- Allocate a set of backlog items to each sprint
- Plan & lay down rules for Sprint Retrospective
6. Manage your agile project
The checklist for managing agile projects-
- Identify agile project management KPIs
- Select the tools for APM
- Help smooth collaboration among different teams
- Organize daily status & scrum meetings with the team to keep them in sync
- Identify obstacles & challenges, find solutions & re-prioritize
7. Build your toolset & agile infrastructure
Choose your task-tracking application & agile project management application. On a high level, the suite of agile tools must cover your need to-
- Set up Epics i.e., milestones with proper sprint planning — timeline workflow,
- Plan Story points,
- Manage sprints, dates, status, tasks, etc.,
- Document the agile project management backlogs and engineering wiki,
- Generate & view burnup charts, velocity charts, and cumulative flow diagrams,
- Track the time of each sprint,
- Track issues & bugs
- Label issues & backlog to prioritize them
- Tools to write test cases & automate development, QA, and delivery processes
- Tools for effective communication & collaboration
- Integrate third-party add-on tools.
ONES.com ticks all the above boxes & is a brilliant end-to-end agile project management tool. Try it now.
8. Choose APM KPIs
To ensure that the project runs smoothly as per plans, choose and continuously keep a close eye on the APM’s key performance metrics. Examples-
- Avg Sprint Deviation
- Code quality
- Number of fixed bugs
- Completed user stories
- Budget vs actual costs
- Project-specific KPIs
9. Project execution & iteration
Once you lay down strong APM foundations (esp the agile project management tools), the team steers the product sprint after sprint, iteratively develops the product, performs reviews, loops in the feedback, and adapts to the evolving requirements and circumstances. Here’s the agile project management checklist for successful project execution-
- Execute planned sprints
- Collect feedback
- Perform sprint reviews & retrospectives
- Iteratively improve on features to deliver expected outcomes
- Aggressively test the features & release them to the users
10. Agile project closure
After the agile project’s development, testing, and deployment come the handover part where you need to transfer the project to either the in-house maintenance team or the outsourcing partner. Here are some agile project management checklists for the successful transitioning of project controls to the new team-
- Release beta product
- Cleanup dummy data, and code in general
- Officially sign off the project after completing the handover & knowledge transfer to the concerned team/s.
Summing it up!
Agile is effective. We have discussed in our insight on “What is agile project management?” which projects are best for agile methodology. ONES.com tools (ONES Project, ONES Wiki, ONES TestCase) cover the end-to-end needs of your agile projects. Most of the agile project management checklist items that we discussed in this insight get easier than planning a birthday party. Try it out if you are on the hunt for an effective agile project management tool.
Originally published at https://blog.ones.com on December 20, 2022.
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