History of Agile Project management

Continuous delivery in software industry is more than any phrase. Proper continuous

delivery helps in customer retention and this is one of the reason that it becomes such a hot topic

today. Before understanding the importance of continuous delivery, it is very important to

understand about the history of agile and how it is implemented. This research covers a two

decades plus emergence of software development which includes origin of agile and its benefits.

What is the definition of agile project management and from where is it originated? Is

agile an oxymoron? Is agile an antithesis of traditional approach? Is agile project management is

sequential, autocratic command, top down, linear and control paradigm? Is project management

is grounded with Fordism, manufacturing, taylorism, rationalism, reductionism, mass production

and scientific management? Is project management suited for repetitive construction project and

service operations? Does agile methodology addresses the challenges faced in 21st century i.e.

time sensitive, high risk, R&D oriented, service development projects and new projects. If all of

them are right and true then where does the concept of agile project management fits?

Before starting with agile project management, let’s understand the meaning of project

management and traditional projects. Agile also focuses on iterative development, where we can

visualize the solution and taking customer feedback before finalizing it, rather than making the

final module we make the first-level or end-to- end flow and we take customer feedback, this

feedback will improve the existing product and with these iterations we come up with the final

product, which meets the customers expectation. Iterative development is a planned rework

development. In simpler form, project is can be an individual or group enterprise that is carefully

designed and planned to achieve a common goal or objective. The definition of project
management is as follows,” The application of knowledge, tools, skills and techniques to manage

the activities to meet the requirement of projects”. (PMBOK, CMMI, SEBOK). Project

management is characterized by 10 knowledge areas and 5 process groups. Knowledge areas are:

Integration Management, Scope Management, Schedule Management, Cost Management,

Quality Management, Human resource Management, Communication Management, Risk

Management, Procurement Management and Stakeholder Management. Project management

have proven to be the best in the origin of civilization. Few great examples are pyramids, roman

coliseum, Empire Estate, Great Wall of China and tower of babel. Some attribute it to Bar charts

(1765), Harmon grams (1896), Gantt Charts (1916), Flow lines (1930), and Line of Balance

(1941). Others attribute it to Critical Path (1957), Program Evaluation Review Technique (1958),

Work Breakdown Structure (1962), Cost/Schedule Control System (1967), and Iron Triangle

(1969).

Figure 3: Agile Development Methodology

 In this research paper agile methodology is defined as set of principles that embody with

twelve concepts designed to permit self-organizing team development to deliver product/project

early and within short period of time frames, while working closely directly with business

customer (Beck et al., 2001). Agile methods were direct subsidiary of software methods from the

1980s, namely Joint Application Design (1986), Rapid Systems Development (1987), and Rapid

Application Development (1991). Regardless, they were established in earlier model, such as

Total Quality Management (1984), New Product Development Game (1986), Agile Leadership

(1989), Agile Manufacturing (1994), and Agile Organizations (1996).

Agile methodology formally established in 1990 with scrum (1993), synch-n-stabilize

(1995), crystal (1991), judo strategy (1997), dynamic systems development (1994) and internet

time (1998). Few other agile methods were open source software development (1999), adaptive

software development (1999), new development rhythm (1989), and lean development (2003).

However, extreme programming (XP, 1999), was one of the most popular single event that gave

success to the agile methodology by the beginning of 2000’s.

The Oil Shock in the year 1973 weaken the concept of strategic planning. "Necessity is

the mother of invention" and this made the invention of new theories, approaches and paradigms.

These approaches included incremental, adaptive, contingent, and participative, planning,

budgeting, and, forecasting (Henry Mintzberg's 1994 book, "Rise and Fall of Strategic

Planning"). The process of merging project management, TQM, manufacturing, strategic

planning, complex adaptive system and software theories created the base for agile project

management in today’s world. There is no model definition for agile project management. In

traditional waterfall method, it is presumed that 100% of the project scope is predictable and
successfully delivered with enough strict processes and documentations. But in Agile

methodology, 70% to 80% clients’ needs are hidden, inexpressible and tacit. Therefore, user

needs should be pulled out a bit at a time with human intensive discussion, lightweight adjustable

process and product technology, and near term, time based sense probe and response probe.

Figure 4: Agile Project Management Definitions

Agile methodology appeared different to the observer. However, they had many things in

common than anyone can expect. The creators of agile methodology gathered together at one

platform in 2001 to expand and explore these commonalities. They created a website which

contained agile manifesto that still stands today. Agile is all about adaptive planning and

changing requirement, in agile environment requirement keeps changing, here rather than we

avoid the requirement changes delaying the project we welcome them because the sooner we

know them the better product we can make. The conception of agile project management

emerged circa 2003 and the first books appeared in 2004. The declaration of agile project

management of interdependence was formed in 2005 which represents its values and norms.
Figure 5: Agile Project Management Values-Declaration of Interdependence

Early, agile methodology had their own project management frameworks, namely XP

(Extreme programming) and scrum. There is some argument about which method came first with

respect to XP and scrum? Scrum came first and XP took some concepts from scrum and most of

it practices from 1980s. However, XP played main role for laying down the most adaptive project

framework in 1998 and 1999. XP’s agile model was also known as “Release Planning”. Its

principles were published in 1999.

The project management and information technology communities acclaimed it as a

major success in the formalization and formation of adaptive and agile project management

models. Earlier methods attempted to establish adaptive and agile frameworks such as iterative

(1975), evolutionary (1976), incremental (1978), stage gate (1983) and spiral (1986). However,

the most credible adaptive and agile project management model is release planning. Release

planning was the fact of freeing for project managers who wanted freedom from the traditional

waterfall methods.

Adaptive and agile project management is in its golden age. It is also important to note

that there are few population of middle managers which are placed at bell curve. They believe
that agile methods are not well conceived paradigm that may fall short of more disciplined

paradigm. Their all complaints are common and sensed like undisciplined, small software

projects, no plans and processes, no requirements, spaghetti code, no documentation, poor

performance and security and not maintainable.

Contrary, agile methodology are more highly disciplined, uncertainty of today’s projects

and yet flexible for ambiguity. Agile methodology includes well managed requirements (user

stories), JIT architectures, documentations and designs (Just in time), plans (iteration and release

plans) and product assurance (quality assurance, testing, configuration management, workflow,

security automation and certification). Results of agile methods are 10 times greater quality at a

fraction of cost than traditional waterfall methods. As per the research says, agile methodology

are used by 80-90 percent of the worldwide projects. They are most commonly used by the big

organizations who uses big data like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon etc. and also commonly

used in major global telecom giants.

Agile software development methodology practices shows that “there are strong social

and public forces at play in teams working on that underline the value of agile development

methodologies” (Whitworth & Biddle, 2007, p 35). One of the four main central values of the

agile software development methodologies processes “emphasizes the and communality and

relationship of developers and the human role reflected in the contracts”, suggesting that public

contact was the main objective of agile since the beginning (Abrahamson, Salo, Ronkainen, &

Warsta, 2002, p. 11)

Why and how did agile methodology speeded quickly in just few years without any

public sector support? Traditional waterfall paradigms from 1951 (like, system engineering,

project management etc.) spent billions of dollars, took decades and many more standards to gain
 similar achievement. On one hand, traditional approach formulated cultural foundation in which

agile methods rest, as well as the motivation for change themselves. The primary driver of agile

success is utter simplicity and low barrier to entry.

Agile Manifesto

Due to the instability in software development in 1990’s, a group of forward thinking experts

invented the term “agile software development” in 2001at a discussion in Snowbird, Utah. A

detailed document was developed naming, “The Agile Manifesto”, which outlined the creative

approach to software development. Their work was being used in top notch IT industry and

influenced them as “best practices”. Agile helps us in delivering product, customer values faster

than our traditional process, this is related with fast feedback approach. Agile is incremental and

iterative development. In agile approach we can develop some of the value added things first and

take those things to end customer and collect feedback before developing remaining part of the

product.

Following are the agile manifesto principles:

Agile also focuses on iterative development, where we can visualize the solution and taking

customer feedback before finalizing it, rather than making the final module we make the first-level

or end-to- end flow and we take customer feedback, this feedback will improve the existing product

and with these iterations we come up with the final product, which meets the customers expectation.

Iterative development is a planned rework development. In agile we can plan short-term durations

and as we move forward we elaborate the upcoming plan. Agile focuses on making stakeholders part

of the development.

Difference between modern agile methodologies over traditional waterfall methodologies:

 Agile methodology is the fast growing approach nowadays. Previous to agile

methodology, waterfall was being used in an organization but due to this approach, the project

success has declined. Organization prefer agile more over waterfall approach. In agile, planning

scale is for short term whereas in waterfall it’s for long term which to lead to increase the cost

and risk factor too. In waterfall, distance between developer and customer is long whereas in

agile it’s short and maintain a good communication among them. Time between implementation

and specification is short in agile. By using agile methodology, problems can be discovered

shortly and rectified before it can turn into major problem. This also helps in reducing risk.

Figure 6: Agile Versus Traditional Waterfall

Process of Agile Methodology and traditional waterfall methodology