This articles explains the key difference between Traditional Project management methods and Agile Project Management.
Traditional Project Management Methods
Flexible project management has gained popularity in recent years because of its effectiveness as opposed to the traditional Waterfall project management style. The main differences found in the process of planning, work implementing, and integrating people involved in the project.
While in traditional project management the process is more or less sequential where one step has to be completed before the next one can begin. Known as the Waterfall model, it defines the requirements, develops a detailed schedule, performs tasks that build the product and finally delivers it. If one has to go back in a phase and fix something, it proves costly and less efficient to do so. This is especially appropriate in situations where the project definition is rigorous right from the beginning, the nature of the project being built or manufactured for instance.
Agile Project Management Method
While on the other hand we have the approach of agile which really appreciates change and incremental progress. Contrary to the traditional model which prescribes a complete documentation of all sources of actions, Agile distributes this workload into manageable phases called sprints or iterations. These sprints usually range between 2 and 4 weeks and every one delivers a potentially shippable product/feature. This enables teams to address new information, feedback or even changing scope by a project in a very efficient manner. Agile works well with flexibility and this is why it used in software development.
The other main difference that I see is of the team structure and how the work divided and coordinated. In traditional project management, the decision-making process centralized and the project manager is in charge of all the activities to done. In Agile, a team made of workers who work together and are responsible for all the activities; they do not report to anybody but make decisions as a team.
Communication is also an important feature of agile because it requires the project team to engage stakeholders constantly throughout the project. This is in contrast to other set methodologies in which clients only get to see the end results after a certain period of development. Thus, this constant engagement guarantees the product’s consistency with the client’s needs and expectations during the entire development cycle.
To sum up, the Agile approach used in projects puts more emphasis on flexibility, responsiveness, and collaboration. Due to its ability to be repeated several times and focus more on clients it is better suited to the constantly changing projects.
Benefits of Agile Training
As mentioned earlier, there are several advantages of agile training particularly to individuals and teams interested in mastering project management and embracing Agile. In its turn, Agile training has one great advantage – the flexibility of approaches and working conditions increased. Agile stresses flexibility and pace and demonstrates how changes can made and incorporated on an organization’s project. This makes it easier if there are changes in the project or in the requirements of the project or if there is an emergence of other issues.
The other advantage is effectiveness in the flow of information sharing between different entities. Agile training helps the teams to have efficient ways of doing things and the ways of interacting with each other. Daily meetings wherein people stand up and have a quick discussion, daily scrums, and sprint planning sessions make communication more effective, and therefore results in coherent, cross-functional teams.
This is due to the enhancement of effectiveness of communication in the development process that brought about by agile training hence resulting in the delivery of better quality products to the market. This is because when working on a project, feedback loops can performed frequently, whether in the form of mini sprints or even shorter, which enables the recognition of problems early on with subsequent resolutions. This acts as an iterative process and produces a better customer product value to satisfy the customers’ needs.
In addition, Agile training increases the satisfaction level of the customers. Similarly, following up customer feedback in each phase of a project increases the chances of delivering a project as the end product of which will meet the customers’ expectations hence improving the customers relations.
