As part of our program, we’ve been taking training course in Agile Project Management and will be soon taking the exam to be certified.
But what is Agile PM? It is a type of project management methodology.
Agile Business Consortium (2018) explains it a bit more: “DSDM is a proven framework for Agile project management and delivery, helping to deliver results quickly and effectively and, over the years, has been applied to a wide range of projects – from small software developments all the way up to full-scale business process change”.
It is used in a variety of projects from small to big. And some major companies are starting to apply this methodology.
I wanted to share five things I learned about Agile PM that I will try to implement in my professional life from now on.
It’s all about communication. The more communicated the team is, the better it will be. But communication has to be a between all areas and all members. Everyone needs to know what’s going on whenever they want. I have had times when I was doing something at work just to find out someone else had already done it and all because we weren’t communicated. This not only makes the brand or company look bad but it’s a double effort put into something when we could’ve been doing something else.
Being transparent and honest. This one is linked to the previous one. The team needs to be transparent. Everyone involved should be aware of what is going on, everyone. This means that the team needs to be honest with one another and this just saves time and misunderstandings.
Adaptability to change. Change is inevitable. We learn this very early on with Agile PM. It would be great to incorporate this in every aspect of our lives specially with any project we undertake. We can try to predict everything but things will change and we need to be ready to adapt to them. I feel that in film, specially being in production, this is something we learn after some time and we embrace it.
Test and learn. And do it fast. This also can be applied to any project. To test as early as we can and change. But also to take our mistakes as learnings to make things better next time and not as failures. And this takes me to the next one:
Everyone is responsible for everything. This means it’s all about the team when things are going good and also when things are going bad. Do not blame anyone. I’ve certainly had my shares of blame and pointing fingers at me. I am very critical with me so I always know when I messed up and always take the blame and try to learn. Making someone feel bad constantly about what they did does not make anyone better and it certainly doesn’t make the project better. It’s better to learn and move on.
References:
Denning, S. (2015) How Agile and Zara Are Transforming The US Fashion Industry. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/03/13/how-agile-and-zara-are-transforming-the-us-fashion-industry/#6a5703b97e82 (Accessed: 11 April 2018)
Agile Business Consortium (2018) Available at: https://www.agilebusiness.org/content/introduction-0 (Accessed: 11 April 2018)
Gupta, S. (2018) ‘Agile Project Management Week One’ [PowerPoint presentation]. BS7709: Experiencing the Creative Industries (Professional Practice). Available at: https://canvas.kingston.ac.uk/courses/7815/pages/project-management (Accessed: 11 April 2018)
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