Study Guide
Agile Project Management
Created By: Ranko Lukovic, Teaching Assistant
Module 1: ​Introduction to Project Management
Lesson 1.2​: Project Management Overview
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Iron Triangle: Time, Budget and Performance
Goal is to find the right balance.
Lesson 1.3​: Waterfall vs. Agile
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Waterfall Project Management Methodology: It uses the dependencies technique
which means that we need to find out what does need to be done in order for
other things to follow. The goal is to have most things done in the least amount of
time.
● If you build a house with waterfall technique you would first write all things
needed for it. Then set a process of steps to be taken (build a foundation, wait for
it to dry, build a wall etc..)
● It came out during the 90’s
● Agile Project Management Methodology
○ Based on the idea that we can build small improvements one step at a
time.
○ It’s not that great for building a house since the small step process could
be very long but when it comes to IT, each new change (let’s say in a
game) means a lot.
Module 2: ​History of Agile
Lesson 2.1​: Rapid Application Development Part 1
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Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● RAD (Rapid Application Development) is originally released as methodology
(SSADM – Structured Systems Analysis and Design Methods). It was produced
for the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency, a UK government
office concerned with the use of technology in government, from 1980 onwards.
● Its waterfall method is:
Stage 0 – Feasibility study (Is it possible)
Stage 1 – Investigation of the current environment (can we do it)
Stage 2 – Business system options
Stage 3 - Requirements specification
Stage 4 – Technical system options
Stage 5 – Logical design
Stage 6 – Physical design
● Ready, Fire, Aim concept was constructed in “82 where the goal is to get
something done ASAP.
● Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement
1. Determine objectives > Cumulative cost >
2. Identify and resolve risks >
3. Development and Testing > Release >
4. Plan the next iteration > Review > Back to 1.
● The Department of Defense (DoD) was the biggest software development
organization (during the 80’s and 90’s) so they have published their own
DOD-STD-2167 waterfall standard.
Lesson 2.2​: Rapid Application Development Part 2
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Born in 1991 from James Marin publication ​“Rapid Application Development”​.
● It came in 4 phases:
1.Requirements Planning Phase
2. User Design Phase – Joint Application Development (JAD)
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3. Construction Phase – Customer Remains Involved (Beta testing)
4. Cutover Phase
In 1995, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, more known as Rugby
Programmers, developed the “SCRUM Software Development Process” which is
still in use today.
RAD became popular with the decreased use of Client Server software and the
rise of Web Based Applications which were the impetus of the now famous
“Dot.Com Boom” and peaked around the year 2000.
Prototyping, iterative Development, Rapid Development, and Continuous
Improvements became the cornerstones of a new kind of Project Management.
Key aspects were: Valued Ambiguity, Fierce Release Schedules and the fact that
requirements gathering was less important.
Change was inevitable with over 80% of the system's total cost came from the
maintenance.
Lesson 2.3​: The Agile Manifesto
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Complicated versus Complex problems required changing Project Management
philosophies, instead of the 80/20 split between development and maintenance,
we need a 100% solution. This meant that the industry came to realize that
complicated problems are in fact just complex and had more factors included.
Better solution was needed.
● This is when the Agile manifesto came out (Snowbird Meeting in 2001).
● Key facts were:
Individuals and interactions
over Processes and tools
Working software
over Comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over Contact negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
● While there is a value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left
more!
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Lesson 2.4​: What was Old is New Again
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Agile becomes a King again. It rejected formal processes (to a degree, there is
still a value for planning and documenting but business impact was a priority) in
favor of flexibility.
● People then developed Agile Processes
● Without flexibility, Agile will simply become Waterfall 2.0
● Andrew Hunt, one of the Agile Founders defined a Slogan of Agile: “​The problem,
Hunt says​, is that agile requires developers to think and be adaptive, when most
simply prefer to follow a narrow set of rules for a set of practices because it’s
safer.”​
Module 3: ​Flavors of Agile
Lesson 3.1​: Scrum
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● 5 principles:
1. Focus is on the Team ()
2. Minimum Viable Product ()
3. Product Backlog ()
4. Use Sprints (Short - 2 week to a month long feature addons)
- Sprint Planning:
*Analyze the Backlog
*Set Sprint Goals (The What)
*Assign Resources (The Who)
*Determine Techniques (The How)
*Estimate the sprint
*Execute (Code to Production)
*Sprint Review (Refine Estimating Skills)
5. Fixed Duration, Viable Effort, Viable Features ()
Lesson 3.2​: Lean
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Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Main idea was cost reduction
● The goal of lean is to make the developing process sustainable, which is done by
continuously improving processes
● Listening to and incorporating customer feedback is at the core of both Agile and
Lean.
● Habitually review and reduce Waste
● Uses other Agile Methodologies (Like Kanban Boards and Scrum)
● Continuous delivery and continuous improvement
Lesson 3.3​: XP (Extreme Programming)
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● If we decompile our tasks into smaller packages we would get better results.
● Parts of this process are the following:
○ Sit together
○ Whole Team
○ Information Workspace
○ Energized Workforce
○ Pair Programming (It has 2 people overlooking each other. It help to get
project completed better and faster)
○ Stories and Epics
○ Weekly and Quarterly Cycles
○ Slack
○ Ten Minute Build
○ Test-First Programming
○ Incremental Design and Refactoring
○ PLANNING/FEEDBACK LOOPS:
Release Plan(Months)>Iteration Plan(Weeks)>Acceptance
Test(Days)>Stand UP Meeting(One Day)>Pair Negotiation(Hours)>Unit
Test(Minutes)>Pair Programming(Seconds)>Code>​Redo one of the
previous if needed
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Lesson 3.4​: DSDM (Dynamic System Development Method)
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
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Often sold as non tech PM tool
Focus on the business need
Deliver on time
Collaborate
Never compromise quality
Build incrementally from firm foundations
Develop iteratively
Communicate continuously and clearly
Demonstrate control
Proponent of the MoSCoW Method (What do we Must have, Should have, Could
have and Won't have) – What is in/out of scope etc..
Process goes this way:
Pre-Project(Feasibility,Foundations)>Exploration>Engineering>Incremental
Deployment>Post-Project
Lesson 3.5​: Kanban
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Pull method of assigning work on Agile Projects
● In Japanese, Kanban translates to “Visual Signal”
● Work Items are Represented Visually on a Kanban Board
● Uses JIT Techniques from Japanese Car manufacturer
● Design and Build Cars in the same way supermarkets stock shelves
● Eliminates bottlenecks
● This gives better forecasting on a project completion
Module 4: ​Agile Planning
Lesson 4.1​: Agile Planning
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Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Minimum Viable Product
● Determine Methodology Combination
● Agile iron Triangle
● Driver is typically Schedule/Budget
● Iteration Plan (Adjustable sprints)
● Start Backlog (Background tasks, something that is a good idea but it is not main
requirement)
● User Stories and Epics versus Requirements
● Estimate Effort
● Investment Mindset for Agile Projects
● This system basically only pushes the must haves of a project
Lesson 4.2​: Hybrid Planning
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Common for Modern Government Projects
● Procurement Challenges
● Planning looks like Waterfall (but is a higher level)
● Iteration and Progressive Elaboration Used
● Requirements (Ends versus means, We want to have everything forwarded to
the goal, Each dollar goes to the initial cause)
● Can backfire if major scope changes occur
● Mitigates some Risks as opposed to pure Agile
● A possible Baby Step for Traditional Project Managers
Lesson 4.3​: Video Lab: Developing an Agile Schedule
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● For this​ ​part of the course you’ll need Azure DevOps
● Under fdot/Test Custom Agile Rule/Boards/Backlogs we have several backlog
tasks
● Whenever something new pops up we can place it to the backlog
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● To add items press “New Work Item”>Enter the description or name>And then
“Add to top”
● To set the priority click on any of them and put the value of “Effort”
● To add them to sprint drag the task to the right, under planning
● Lets move to the boards where we can see all active tasks of a sprint
● We can place only one value of effort to each different task, which means that
there won't be 2 tasks with value of 10
● Process that each task will take goes like this:
1. Its created and places to the New section
2. Once it’s activated it goes to Active part
3. Once completed it should be moved to the Resolved group
4. At the end it goes to Closed and it stays they for further reference in case of
need
Lesson 4.4​: Video Lab: Developing a Wagile/Scrumfall Schedule
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● In this video we are going thru waterfall software development project
● Here we see classic path which goes as following:
1.Statement of the problem
2.Design
3.Implementation
4.Testing
5.Acceptance
● The process is the same as in the previous lesson but here we can add the tasks
that aren’t dependent on any other. We can create the correlation by selecting
tasks and choosing the “Connection” option.
● Important part is that we strive to keep our scope the same as at the beginning.
Module 5: ​Agile Planning
Lesson 5.1​: Executing an Agile Project Part 1
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
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● Goal is to have everything completed in the same time, not to deviate tasks from
each other
● Phases:
○ Planning
○ Code Reviews (Beta testing, UA testing…)
○ Release Schedule
● We can accept the failure as long as we learn from it!
Lesson 5.2​: Executing an Agile Project Part 2
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Reviews (After Action Reports, Review of what is done)
● Estimate Self-Corrections (We check performance speed and adjust it to
maximize results)
● Pull versus Push Work items
● Two things to keep in mind: Agile could seem like a documentation lacking
procedure but if taken correctly it will not be, and the second is that teams aren’t
that good at estimating their time/workload.
Lesson 5.3​: Daily Standup Meetings
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Vital to Agile Projects (Daily meetings aren’t necessary but they do bring more
value to project completion)
● Collaboration is Key (With great understanding comes great outcome)
● Assign Work (Separate the duties)
● Address Challenges (Explain and approach to each issue, skipped problems
could have big potential later)
● Continually Improve (With each small improvement step we create great
outcome)
● Track Progress (While we track progress we reduce demoralization and
procrastination)
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Lesson 5.4​: Minimum Viable Product/Value Delivery Part 1
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● What is Value?
○ Business Impact (Basically everything that investor would ask for)
○ Measurable (Something that can be calculated and rationalized)
○ Shortest Time to Market (ETA on getting started-going out to the field)
● Minimum Viable Product
○ Fastest Way to Provide Value
○ Especially Useful for Web Based Applications
○ Contracts can be Complicated
● MoSCoW Prioritization comes up as a great solution
Lesson 5.5​: Minimum Viable Product/Value Delivery Part 2
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Gold plating Issues with Agile (Scope gets badly determined, projects could go
up in price much more than planned, investors could shut it down because of a
budget “black hole”)
● Agile Projects tend to have a bad reputation on cost
● Planning and a fully iterative RTM can prevent this issue
Lesson 5.6​: Executing a Kanbal Project
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● We are going to use Wrike software for this lesson
● Under Created by me/Test Projects we have a dashboard with regular options
(To Do, Doing, Done, backlog, Cancelled)
● Task management is really simple and it's almost the same as in the prior videos
● You yourself are your own boss, which means that you can schedule your
bottleneck
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Module 6: ​Conclusion
Lesson 6.1​: Application to Cybersecurity
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Cyber (ISCA) Goes Agile:
● Enterprise Security Programs can leverage Agile
○ Building the Train Track while the Train is Rolling
○ Impact Focused versus Agile’s Value Focus
● Investment Cost = More Oversight
● Cybersecurity Goes Enterprise:
● Cyber is reliving the Software Development Growing Pains from the 1980’s and
1990’s
● Have been steadily adopting PM Methods as investment costs rise
● Talented Cybersecurity Project Managers desperately needed
Lesson 6.2​: Application to Other Enterprise and IT Projects
Skills learned from this lesson: Agile, Management, Project Leadership
● Is Agile a Fad?
● What’s old does not mean that its bad, what is new is not necessarily better and
vice versa.
● Cognitive Framework is Important
● Techniques Evolve
● Process that Agile is taking:
Plan>Design>Develop>Test>Deploy>Review>Launch
● What separates a good PM is their product vision and work organization
Lesson 6.3​: Conclusion
● Here we conclude the course and write the references to be checked if more
details are required
● So what have we learned:
○ The origins and philosophy of Agile Project management
○ The types of Agile Methodologies
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○ Best practices of Agile Projects
○ How to select the best Agile Methodology for a Project
○ How to plan Project using an Agile Methodology
○ How to execute projects using an Agile methodology
● Study Resources:
○ PMI Agile Practice Guide:
https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/practice-guides/agile
○ Rapid Application Development:
https://kissflow.com/rad/rapid-application-development/
○ An empirical investigation into the adoption of systems development
methodologies:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037872069800072X
○ An empirical investigation into the adoption of systems development
methodologies:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037872069800072X
○ Ebert, L. (2002). Successful project management for software product and
information system development. Paper presented at Project Management
Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium, San Antonio, TX. Newtown
Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
○ Martin, J. (1991). Rapid application development. Macmillan Publishing
Co., Inc..
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