1st DevCon Project Management Camp, July 21, 2011

I was lucky enough to have been invited by one of my I.T Colleagues to the 1st DevCon Project Management Camp last July 21, 2011 at the Upper & Lowercase, Bistro Rosario, F. Torres, Davao City.

The 1st DevCon Project Management Camp on Agile Methodologies of Project Management

There have been more than 150 people in attendance during the Project Management Camp, that from various fields – I.T Students, WebDevs, Programmers, I.T Companies and more. Even some bloggers have been around. Mark Maglana, one of the speakers, noted that the attendance was way beyond the number they’ve anticipated.

I guess, it’s been so for a good reason.

Project Management is a very important area that shouldn’t be left uncovered or paid little attention to. Unreliable Project Management can lead to losses in many means and ways.

Losses due to Unreliable Project Management

Market Timing – when you exercise unreliable project management, there’s a great chance that you might get bad market timing. Bad Market Timing in a sense on which day you’ve said the project to be released which later on has to be delayed because it’s not quite polished and ready for release. This ultimately hurts the Sales Pipeline as well. Not to forget, lessens the value in your company/group.

Unreliable Project Management also leads to a fall in the productivity of the developers in your team. It can result into sleepless nights, and like mentioned above result in an unpolished product, that aside from being unpolished, isn’t really ready for public exposure.

To make things short, all of these factors from Market Timing, Developer Productivity, Sales Pipelines and Lost Opportunities go together.

While adopting the Agile Methodology in Project Management becomes more and more popular, you need to be aware though that this methodology is not for everyone and that there are various types of Agile Management that you can stick to. From XP (Extreme Programming) for a team wherein Developers/Programmers are dominant, to a Scrum team (where there are usually a lot of various roles to carry), to the Lean Software Development and a few more.

But why should you go Agile?

You should go agile because this will resolve flaws in the current methodology. Depending on the methodology being applied, it makes your whole team more productive and balances the tasks/load of your various teams in your company. Aside from the ones mentioned above, going Agile also helps you to get the most out of your people by seeding them into the fields that they are usually most effective at. It’s not really a good idea to let a web designer to do code and vice-versa, eh?

When going Agile could mean going Wrong
Going Agile may make your team/group counterproductive, too. Here are various reasons why and how it could end up that way:

• Unfamiliarity with Agile Project Management. Make sure that you read and discuss your desired methodology exhaustively and have questions that bother anyone on the team answered. Else, someone in your squad will get lost.
• Culture Change in Organization and Team Wise – You won’t work with the same people forever (well, that’s the way it is in most cases), be quick to adopt to the new environment and the new people around you. Unless you guys complement each other and know which roles to take in, going Agile is not for you.
• Half-Baked Implementations – it’s a very bad idea to move from one methodology to another while your project is ongoing. See what fits best at the start of the project.

If you wish to know more about Agile Project Management, make sure that you come to read the Manifest at agilemanifesto.org