An Agile Approach to Project Work

The year 2020 taught us that the world of work can change in an instant. We have to adapt, modify, and re-imagine the way we work and communicate.

This is what an agile approach to project leadership is all about. But how does one go about managing a project this way? Don’t we have to plan in detail, execute according to plan, manage our baselines and risks? How do we deliver a project when there isn’t a detailed plan in place?

Agile Approach to Projects

1. Guide to An Agile Approach
2. Work with Agility
3. Expand Your Agile Skill Set

Guide to An Agile Approach

Agile Fundamentals: A Comprehensive Guide to Using an Agile Approach answers these questions and more. Mike Griffiths, a thought leader in agile project management, delves into exactly how a project is managed using agile methodologies. There is still planning, just not at the same level of detail. There is still executing the project, but we hold retrospectives as we move through the project, and then make modifications. We still manage risk, but we work with success modes instead of failure modes.

Most importantly, we act as servant leaders. Relationships are the cornerstones of agile projects. As servant leaders we do not manage but rather guide, encourage, and support the team using emotional intelligence and the elements of our agile toolkit, such as a backlog or Kanban board.

Work with Agility

In Agile Fundamentals, Mike shows you the way to working with agility. And the journey can be a fun one: He shows you collaboration games such as Remember the Future, Prune the Product Tree, and Speedboat. He also explains estimating tools such as planning poker, user stories, product roadmaps, and T-shirt sizing.

Agile Fundamentals is divided into three sections to give you the best opportunity for using an agile approach successfully:

Part One: You’ll learn what it means to have an agile mindset. You’ll learn about agile principles and values, and about the different agile methodologies.

Part Two: Mike dives into what it means to be a servant leader; how to lead a development team to success and how to establish a shared vision.

Part Three: You’ll see how to run an agile project, from adaptive planning to estimating, to detecting and solving problems.

The world of work is changing. Leaders must change with it to create efficient teams, (sometimes distributed all over the world), and to produce deliverables that bring value to every stakeholder.

Expand Your Agile Skill Set

If you’re a project leader who wants to dive into working with an agile approach, then Agile Fundamentals is the book you’ve been waiting for.  This essential desk reference breaks down agile in a way that makes it easy to understand and practical to follow.  Agile Fundamentals is available in hard copy or in an online subscription format.  

RMC also offers a self-directed Agile Fundamentals eLearning Course that teaches agile project development, practices, tools, and techniques to immediately use agile methods on your projects.  If you are looking to introduce additional team members to Agile Fundamentals, contact us to learn more about our instructor-led classes.