Concept 

Description and Keywords 

Remark 

Iterative Retrospective 

An iteration retrospective is a specialized type of meeting used on projects with an agile framework and is conducted at the end of each iteration. 

The purpose of a retrospective is to:  

• cover project progress thus far and  
• determine what worked well, what did not work well (Lessons learned) 
• how project performance can be improved going forward (improvement, raise efficiency) 
• Address issues 

Inviting the key stakeholders to the iteration retrospective will allow the project team to address any concerns the stakeholders may have and develop a plan to ensure the problems encountered do not recur. This approach should be beneficial in reassuring the stakeholders that positive action is being taken to bring the project back into alignment with project goals.  

Prioritized Features in Backlog 

In agile projects, a backlog is a list of features, or requirements, to be developed. The features are first prioritized and then developed accordingly. When prioritizing a backlog, risks and value are typically the primary considerations (aside from legal or other requirements).  

The backlog must be prioritized and reprioritized throughout the project to determine what to include in each iteration. High-value features should be prioritized first as not all features are likely to be developed due to project constraints. Agile projects generate revenue by releasing product increments to the market with the high-value features first while lower priority features are still being developed. 

Risks must also be considered when prioritizing the product backlog. High-risk features should be prioritized over lower risk ones. When there is a risk of failure, as in this case, it is better to fail earlier in the project rather than later when more project resources have been expended. 

An iteration burndown chart tracks the work that remains to be completed in the iteration backlog 

Scope Management in Agile 

In an Adaptive or Agile Life Cycle, the deliverables are developed over multiple iterations where a detailed scope is defined and approved for each iteration when it begins. Three processes (Collect Requirements, Define Scope, and Create WBS) are repeated for each iteration. 

In an adaptive or agile life cycle, the sponsor and customer representatives should be continuously engaged with the project to provide feedback on deliverables as they are created and to ensure that the product backlog reflects their current needs.

Two processes Validate Scope and Control Scope are repeated for each iteration. Projects with adaptive life cycles use backlogs (including product requirements and user stories) to reflect their current needs.

While in Predictive Life Cycle, the project deliverables are defined at the beginning, and any changes to the scope are progressively managed

Iteration Burndown Chart can be used to keep track of remaining works that need to be performed 

During a sprint, newly changes will be updated in Iteration Backlog to consider in the next sprint 

In adaptive life cycles, when multiple teams are concurrently developing a large number of features, the interconnected dependencies between the features become a major risk item

Storyboarding 

Agile prototyping technique showing sequence or navigation through a series of images or illustrations 

Roles of Project Manager in Adaptive Environment 

The role of the project manager does not change bases on managing project using a predictive development life cycle or managing project in adaptive environments. 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Integration (Core Basis) & Resources Management 

Iterative and agile approaches promote the engagement of team members as local domain experts in integration management. The team members determine how plans and components should integrate 

The expectations and roles of the project manager do not change in an adaptive environment, but control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team.  

The project manager’s focus is on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.  

This collaborative approach can be further enhanced when team members possess a broad skill base rather than a narrow specialization. 

Self-Organizing Teams (consists of Generalists instead of SMEs).  

• Team functions with an absence of centralized control. 
• Project Manager roles provides the team with the environment and support needed and trusts the team to get the job done 
• Team buy-in with projects\

Management Style: Laissez Faire

Stakeholders: Key stakeholders are continuously involved and provide frequent feedback which enables responding to changes more quickly and also leads to better quality

Changes: Change is incorporated in real-time during delivery 

Retrospectives: are a primary tool to manage project knowledge and develop the team through discussions of what is working well and team-based problem solving 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Scope 

Agile methods deliberately spend less time trying to define and agree on scope in the early stage of the project and spend more time establishing the process for its ongoing discovery and refinement. 

Agile methods purposefully build and review prototypes and release versions in order to refine the requirements.

In Agile approaches, the requirements constitute the backlog:

• Requirements are described in Epics (Epics can be decomposed into User Stories) and User Stories  
• User Stories are rank and prioritized based on Story Points 

Suitable for projects with evolving requirements, high risks, or significant uncertainty, with the scope is often not understood at the beginning of the project or it evolves during the projects 

Storyboarding is an agile prototyping technique showing sequence or navigation through a series of images or illustrations 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Schedule 

Adaptive planning defines a plan but acknowledges that once work starts, the priorities may change and the plan needs to reflect this new knowledge: 

Iterative scheduling with a backlog:  

• This is a form of Rolling Wave Planning based on adaptive life cycles 
• Requirements are documented in User Stories then prioritized and refined begin work begin 
• Then products features are developed using time-boxed period of work (or Sprint) 
• The release and Iteration length (time-boxed period release) are specified in the schedule management plan  
• Time-boxing helps to minimize scope creep as it forces the teams to process essential features first, then other features when time permits 

On-demand Scheduling (Kanban):

• Typically used in a Kanban system, based on theory-of-constraints and pull-based scheduling concepts from lean manufacturing to limit a team’s work in progress in order to balance demand against the team’s delivery throughput 
• On-demand scheduling does not rely on a schedule that was developed previously for the development of the products or product increments but rather pull works from a backlog or intermediate queue of work to be done immediately as resources become available
• On-demand scheduling is often used for projects that evolve the product incrementally in operational or sustainment environments, and where tasks may be made relatively similar in size and scope or can be bundled by size and scope. 

Theory of Constraints: The theory of constraints is the belief that every system has a constraint, or bottleneck, that hinders the system's performance 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Cost 

For projects with high degrees of uncertainty or those where the scope is not yet fully defined, lightweight estimation methods can be used to generate a fast, high-level forecast of project labor costs, which can then be easily adjusted as changes arise.

In cases where high-variability projects are also subject to strict budgets, the scope and schedule are more often adjusted to stay within cost constraints.

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Quality 

In order to navigate changes, agile methods call for frequent quality and review steps built in throughout the project rather than toward the end of the project.

Recurring retrospectives regularly check on the effectiveness of the quality processes. They look for the root cause of issues then suggest trials of new approaches to improve quality. Subsequent retrospectives evaluate any trial processes to determine if they are working and should be continued or new adjusting or should be dropped from use

In order to facilitate frequent, incremental delivery, agile methods focus on small batches of work, incorporating as many elements of project deliverables as possible. Small batch systems aim to uncover inconsistencies and quality issues earlier in the project life cycle when the overall costs of change are lower

In agile environments, stakeholder engagement with the team ensures customer satisfaction is maintained throughout the project 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Communication 

Project environments subject to various elements of ambiguity and change have an inherent need to communicate evolving and emerging details more frequently and quickly. This motivates streamlining team member access to information, frequent team checkpoints, and co-locating team members as much as possible

In addition, posting project artifacts in a transparent fashion, and holding regular stakeholder reviews are intended to promote communication with management and stakeholders

Practices inherent in the agile approaches can be applied to all types of projects. Practices often include short, daily standup meetings, where the achievements and issues of the previous day, and plans for the current day’s work, are discussed with the project team and key stakeholders. 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Risk 

Risk is considered when selecting the content of each iteration, and risks will also be identified, analyzed, and managed during each iteration. 

Agile/Adaptive Environment: Stakeholder 

To facilitate timely, productive discussion and decision making, adaptive teams engage with stakeholders directly rather than going through layers of management

Often the client, user, and developer exchange information in a dynamic co-creative process that leads to more stakeholder involvement and higher satisfaction

In order to accelerate the sharing of information within and across the organization, agile methods promote aggressive transparency. The intent of inviting any stakeholders to project meetings and reviews or posting project artifacts in public spaces is to surface as quickly as possible any misalignment, dependency, or other issue related to the changing project. 

Scrum of Scrums 

Management Style for Agile 

Management Style: 

• Laissez Faire --> Let's do 
• Servant-Leader