In today’s release of our monthly newsletter we’re covering Agile project management (or should that be agile project management?). In it we find out more about what Agile is and isn’t – you can receive future newsletters by signing up here and take a look at the current Agile edition here.
To accompany the newsletter in this article we look to the project management marketplace to see what options are available for project managers wanting to know more about Agile project management – specifically what are the project management professional bodies providing. We take a look at the offerings from APMG (the organisation responsible for accreditation’s such as PRINCE2 and MSP), PMI, DSDM Consortium and the APM.
First up, DSDM Atern from the DSDM Consortium (Dynamic Systems Development Method) is a ‘proven and robust Agile framework for effective Project Management’. Developed in 1994, the framework has been specifically developed to work alongside project management methods (e.g PRINCE2) and project management approaches (e.g PMI). The training options for DSDM Atern are based on the DSDM Atern Handbook which is available open source at: DSDM Atern Handbook
There are three training options which include; an awareness course (1 day), a practitioners course (3 day) and using Atern with PRINCE2 workshop (1 day). Topics covered include;
- Concepts and Rationale
- Origins and Background
- Benefits of Agile Development Methods
- Principles and Success Criteria
- Alternative Approaches
- Team Structures
- Project Team Roles & Responsibilities
- Management Roles & Responsibilities
- Alternative Team Structures
- DSDM Framework
- Project Phases
- Iterative and Incremental Development
- Phase Products
- Product Quality Criteria
- Management Techniques
- Product Based Planning
- Timebox Management
- Prioritising Requirements (MoSCoW)
- Risk and Configuration Management
- Quality Management
- Development Techniques
- Prototyping
- Modelling
- Facilitated Workshops
- Testing in DSDM Atern
- Adopting DSDM
- Scaling and off-shoring DSDM Atern
- Transitioning to DSDM
Thanks to RADTAC for the course overview for DSDM Atern courses – further details can be found here.
In 2010, the DSDM Consortium approached the APMG to develop a partnership which would see the launch of two new accreditation’s – Agile Project Management Foundation and Practitioner. The new accreditation’s take the DSDM Atern material as the base knowledge source, developing it a little further to include specific project management aspects like planning and control. See how the course outline compares to the DSDM Atern above:
- Agile Project Management Fundamentals
- What is Agile Project Management?
- Benefits of Agile Project Management
- When to use Agile Project Management
- Preparing for a successful Agile project
- Agile Project Management Principles
- The Agile Project Management Process
- Agile Project Management Framework
- Configuring the Agile Project Lifecycle
- Work Products and Deliverables
- Management Products and Deliverables
- Business Work Products and Deliverables
- Technical Products and Deliverables
- Agile Project Teams
- Agile Project Roles and Responsibilities
- Agile Project Team Empowerment
- Agile Project Team Structure
- Agile Project Management Practices
- Facilitated Workshops
- MoSCoW Prioritisation
- Modelling
- Iterative Development
- Timeboxing
- Project Management and Control
- Agile Planning
- Agile Risk Management
- Agile Estimating and Measurement
- Agile Configuration Management
- Other Agile Project Management Concerns
- Agile Requirements (Functional and Nonfunctional Requirements)
- Agile Testing
- Quality Management and Quality Control
- Ensuring Maintainability and Scalability
Thanks to RADTAC for the course overview for Agile Project Management courses – further details can be found here. The examination structure will feel familiar if you’ve already taken other APMG courses like PRINCE2 and MSP with multiple choice for the Foundation and open book 2 hour exam, 4 questions for the Practitioner.
The Project Management Institute’s (PMI) new Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)SM is an altogether different certification and offering from the two mentioned so far. I talked to Rory McCorkle from PMI last week. Rory is a Product Manager for PMI’s credentials, for the PMP and more recently for the PMI-ACPSM. PMI have been developing the certification for the last two years. It stemmed from the Agile Communities of Practice (CoP) group (which incidentally is the 2nd largest group for PMI with 12,000 practitioners). The CoP group wanted to develop a certification which its members, who were already practicing Agile, could take to validate their own experiences to date. The certification was developed by a steering committee of existing thought leaders in Agile and includes amongst others Alistair Cockburn, founding member of the Agile Development Manifesto and Jesse Fewell founder of the Agile CoP. The clue to what the new certification is about is in the title – this is an Agile practitioner certification – not just for project management practitioners. The audience for this certification includes roles like SCRUM Master, technical lead or anyone else working with an Agile environment.
The certification and examination was created by PMI as a way of bringing together all the Agile ‘methodologies’ that exist (namely Scrum, Lean, Kanban and XP) and providing an overarching certification which pulls together concepts and best practice from each. Training programmes for the certification can be developed by providers which meet the examination content, and the materials are based on previously published books. Just like other PMI certifications there is a prerequisite for practitioners which requires 2000 experience hours managing or in a project team plus 1500 hours worked specifically in agile projects.
To read an account of one practitioner’s experiences with the PMI-ACP examination, head over to Derek Huether’s Critical Path blog and read the post My PMI-ACP Exam Experience
Finally, the Association for Project Management (APM) has always been methodology agnostic. Gill Hancock, the Product Development Manager for Qualifications at the APM shared this in a recent Agile discussion:
APM welcomes the use and development of methods in project management and the role they play in contributing to project success. As with all methods, it is the way they are applied to the projects that is important. The ‘slavish following’ of a method, without consideration of external factors will generally lead to unsuccessful outcomes, as methods are only part of the story.
Effective delivery also includes the maturity of the organisation (demonstrated through the application of maturity models), the appropriate knowledge (of which APM’s view can be found in the APM Body of Knowledge) and demonstration of appropriate competences (for example, those represented within the APM Competence Framework). There are certain functions that must be carried out in projects, for example managing scope, risk, cost etc, however there is a broad range of tools, techniques and methodologies that are available to practitioners to achieve this. APM intentionally do not prescribe how functions are carried out as this decision is dependent on the project and the context in which it is being managed.
Image: By dimnikolov (the image brought to mind just some of the comments when reading about Agile and project management over the net these past few months!)
