Understanding The Characteristics, Benefits And Challenges Of Agile IT Project Management: A Literature Based Perspective
📝 Abstract
The objectives of this study was to bring out the understanding of the concept of agile IT project management; what it is and what it is not. It was also aimed at comparing the pros and cons of both agile and traditional methods of IT project management in a typical industry setting; the challenges of going purely agile, and so on. It is purely a review of literature of peer reviewed papers sourced mainly from Google Scholar. It was revealed that agile outweigh the traditional methods in terms of benefits, but its implementation poses a lot of challenges due to a number of issues, paramount among them being organizational culture and empowerment of the project team. This has resulted in a number of industries sticking to the traditional methods despite the overwhelming benefits of agile. In another school of thought, the combination of the two paradigms is the way forward.
💡 Analysis
The objectives of this study was to bring out the understanding of the concept of agile IT project management; what it is and what it is not. It was also aimed at comparing the pros and cons of both agile and traditional methods of IT project management in a typical industry setting; the challenges of going purely agile, and so on. It is purely a review of literature of peer reviewed papers sourced mainly from Google Scholar. It was revealed that agile outweigh the traditional methods in terms of benefits, but its implementation poses a lot of challenges due to a number of issues, paramount among them being organizational culture and empowerment of the project team. This has resulted in a number of industries sticking to the traditional methods despite the overwhelming benefits of agile. In another school of thought, the combination of the two paradigms is the way forward.
📄 Content
International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.10, No.5, September 2019 DOI: 10.5121/ijsea.2019.10502
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UNDERSTANDING THE CHARACTERISTICS, BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF AGILE IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT: A LITERATURE BASED PERSPECTIVE
Godfred Yaw Koi-Akrofi1, Joyce Koi-Akrofi2 and Henry Akwetey Matey3
1,3Department of IT Studies, University of Professional Studies, Accra
2PMO Department, Vodafone Ghana
ABSTRACT
The objectives of this study was to bring out the understanding of the concept of agile IT project management; what it is and what it is not. It was also aimed at comparing the pros and cons of both agile and traditional methods of IT project management in a typical industry setting; the challenges of going purely agile, and so on. It is purely a review of literature of peer reviewed papers sourced mainly from Google Scholar. It was revealed that agile outweigh the traditional methods in terms of benefits, but its implementation poses a lot of challenges due to a number of issues, paramount among them being organizational culture and empowerment of the project team. This has resulted in a number of industries sticking to the traditional methods despite the overwhelming benefits of agile. In another school of thought, the combination of the two paradigms is the way forward.
KEYWORDS
Project Management, Scrum, Agile, Software, Traditional
- INTRODUCTION
Seventeen individuals gathered at The Lodge at Snowbird Ski Resort in Wasatch Mountains in Utah on February 11-13, 2001 to speak, ski, relax and attempt to discover common ground — and, of course, eat.. What emerged was the Manifesto of Agile Software Development (Retrieved on 16/06/2019 at https://agilemanifesto.org/history.html) .
Since the Agile Manifesto was released in 2001, agile approaches to software development projects have evolved significantly. According to many, particularly the writers of the manifesto, agility will become even more essential owing to the recognized reaction to modifications, while Bennekum and Van Hunt (in [1]) even argue that agile thinking is essential to 21st century achievement. Agile is a methodology in software application creation that anticipates the need for flexibility and applies a level of pragmatism to completed item delivery. Agile needs a cultural change in many businesses because it focuses on the smooth delivery of individual pieces or components of the software and not the entire implementation.
Agile project management (APM) is the outcome of the agile crusade for software development. APM is based on a 1986 document published for the Harvard Business Review by Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka entitled “The New Product Development Game.” In this article, the International Journal of Software Engineering & Applications (IJSEA), Vol.10, No.5, September 2019 26
writers used rugby sport as a metaphor to describe the advantages of self-organizing teams in innovative product development and distribution [2]. Agile did not gain so much momentum until Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber mentioned the first agile software development technique at the 1995 OOPSLA convention. After the rugby word that defines how teams form a circle and go to the ball to get it back into play, they called their fresh technique Scrum. At Easel Corporation in 1993, they first implemented this technique. In their book Agile Software Development with Scrum in 2002, Schwaber and Beedle wrote about their experiences, followed in 2004 by Schwaber’s book Agile Project Management with Scrum, which included the job Schwaber had done with Primavera [2]. They discovered that traditional design methods were not appropriate for empirical, unpredictable and non-repeatable procedures while evaluating popular software development procedures [3].
Shane Hastie [4] describes how Agile differs from traditional techniques by focusing much more on team work, collaboration, and self-organization. One of the key to Agile’s achievement is confidence, which must be present between the leader and the team as well as between the team members themselves. Some of the writers of the manifesto (Andrew Hunt, Arie Van Bennekum, and Jim Highsmith) also indicated in an interview with Bowles Jackson that the agile strategy is helpful for all kinds of projects and beyond. Asked directly if agility can be implemented outside IT projects, Hunt further claims that the agile strategy has little to do with software; instead, it is all about acknowledging and implementing feedback.
Van Bennekum adds that agile is holistic and applicable in company and life everywhere – he utilizes it as a notion wherever he is and for whatever he does. In every project facing uncertainty, the third co-author, Highsmith, thinks it is essential to use agile practices and principles. However, their foresight and efforts have not been confirmed by the exerc
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