From the course: Project Management Foundations

The agile project management lifecycle

From the course: Project Management Foundations

The agile project management lifecycle

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- [Narrator] With many projects today you don't know what the solution looks like, or how to build it, so you have to figure it out as you go. This type of project requires a different approach. With Agile projects, the team works on Sprints to deliver a partial set of features that are production quality at regular intervals. With this approach the customer gets value from the project sooner. In addition, the customer's feedback on what's been delivered so far can help improve the overall solution. The customer has to be more involved than in traditional projects. Project teams need to be smaller and more experienced, because they work without much supervision. The Agile life cycle described here is based on Jim Highsmith's "Agile Project Management." It begins with envisioning, which is similar to Waterfall's initiation. You define the product vision and an initial set of goals. Because the solution isn't clear, those goals are likely to change over the course of the project. The speculate process is a type of planning. You create, revise, and prioritize your feature list based on their technical and business considerations. Also, you estimate effort and identify risks. For example, when you start the next Sprint, you don't drag the first few features from the backlog. Instead, you review the entire backlog and decide which features to include in the Sprint. During the explore process, the team builds and delivers the features for the Sprint. Small, independent teams of highly skilled people make it easier to get the work done. Adapt is the part of the Sprint where you review the results delivered and lessons learned. This review is often called a retrospective. Based on feedback, you may change your process, or rework a feature that isn't quite right. You cycle through, speculate, explore, and adapt for each Sprint in the project. When the final Sprint is accepted you close the project and document lessons learned. That's a quick overview of the Agile approach to projects, when you figure out the solution as you go.

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