Applying agile to portfolio management

Portfolio management is a practice of managing organization’s projects in a structured manner. The goal is to produce maximum value by selecting executed projects, realizing the maximum amount of business value. Portfolio management is also one of the most important tools to execute company strategy by focusing on development efforts and as such an important tool for management. Agile project management and development practices have become very common in the last decade, so portfolio management should also be compatible with modern agile development methods when applied. In this thesis, a literature review is made to understand the current research of portfolio management, agile development methods, and combining those two subjects. A goal is to understand how portfolio management process should be defined to be compatible with projects using agile development methods, and if agile methods can be applied in the process as well. A new customized portfolio management framework is designed and implemented based on the literature review for Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company’s investment organization to be used to manage in house development projects. Thesis will follow up if the framework is able to improve organization’s portfolio management practices. The designed framework was considered as an improvement and was designed to support use of agile development methods

Supporting agility in software development projects - defining a project ontology

The popularity of agile software development methods, and agile software project management has been accompanied by significant successes in the delivery of software of business value and quality to client organizations, but has also given rise to more pressing difficulties especially in the support of remotely located teams, and distributed or multi-team development activities. The question of whether or not agile methods, which imply small, focused teams, can be successful in 'big' projects also arises.This paper discusses the essential elements of agile methods, and agile project management methods, and discusses possible applications of ontology-based project support mechanisms, within the application of the digital ecosystem concept

Agile in Public Administration: Oxymoron or reality? An experience report

In the last 10 years, Agile methods and practices have emerged as an alternative for software development. Different "flavors" of Agile have appeared ranging from project management to tests organization. These approaches have being gaining popularity and involve now a solid option for organizations developing software, but what about Public Administrations? Is Agile a suitable option for developing software in Public Administrations? Even if Public Administrations have been traditionally regarded as changeresistant, Agile approach can also provide them with the benefits of quick adaptation and frequent value delivery. This paper presents the results of two different projects, which use an Agile framework based on Scrum, developed by a Spanish Public Administration. Additionally, after considering the obtained results, it takes out some relevant learned lessons on the suitability of applying Agile approaches to Public Administration environments.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2010-20057-C03-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

Addressing challenges to teach traditional and agile project management in academia

In order to prepare students for a professional IT career, most universities attempt to provide a current educational curriculum in the Project Management (PM) area to their students. This is usually based on the most promising methodologies used by the software industry. As instructors, we need to balance traditional methodologies focused on proven project planning and control processes leveraging widely accepted methods and tools along with the newer agile methodologies. Such new frameworks emphasize that software delivery should be done in a flexible and iterative manner and with significant collaboration with product owners and customers. In our experience agile methodologies have witnessed an exponential growth in many diverse software organizations, and the various agile PM tools and techniques will continue to see an increase in adoption in the software development sector. Reflecting on these changes, there is a critical need to accommodate best practices and current methodologies in our courses that deliver Project Management content. In this paper we analyse two of the most widely used methodologies for traditional and agile software development – the widely used ISO/PMBOK standard provided by the Project Management Institute and the well-accepted Scrum framework. We discuss how to overcome curriculum challenges and deliver a quality undergraduate PM course for a Computer Science and Information systems curricula. Based on our teaching experience in Europe and North America, we present a comprehensive comparison of the two approaches. Our research covers the main concepts, processes, and roles associated with the two PM frameworks and recommended learning outcomes. The paper should be of value to instructors who are keen to see their computing students graduate with a sound understanding of current PM methodologies and who can deliver real-world software products.Accepted manuscrip

IMPLEMENTASI APLIKASI PENGINPUTAN INVENTORY MENGGUNAKAN METODE AGILE BERBASIS WEB

The process of collecting  manual input data info  Microsoft Exel takes a long time, data management cannot be done by several warehouse admins at the same time, making inventory reports is often not on time from schedule because they have to recapitulate goods receipt data and goods expenditure data, submit inventory reports to the department takes a long time, data management errors often occur in entering data, deleting data. Microsoft Excel also cannot store data and information centrally in a database, so there is often a discrepancy between the information obtained and data loss caused by human error. Agile development methods are a methodology in software development that is based on an iterative process consisting of rules and agreed solutions. With the aim to produce a software that has a high selling value but uses the lowest possible manufacturing costs. So as to obtain research results in the form of applications built for inventory input systems, namely with web-based agile methods

Learning in the transformation of organizations with the implementation of agile methods

Objective: This article aims to understand the influence of organizational learning on adaptation during the implementation of agile methods in the project management environment in companies. The study focuses on changing project management processes from the traditional “waterfall” to agile management models to meet the needs of organizations. It aims to identify how the organization based on traditional project management migrates to a new process, adapting the new agile methodology to its day-to-day activities. Design/methodology/approach:  We carried out a systematic literature review, answering the question: How does organizational learning influence the adaptation of agile methods? Results: We grouped the articles into five fields of research: Agile Learning; Organizational Learning in the implementation of Lean and Scrum methodologies: Implementation of Lean and Scrum methodologies; Learning of the individual in the organization and Organizational Learning. Originality/Value: This article seeks interests in the potential of applying agile projects and the organizational learning acquired from this new model

A framework to assist in the assessment and tailoring of agile software development methods

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The innovative well-known agile methods offer many powerful agile software development practices and have received considerable attention from both practitioners as well as the research community. While many organizations are interested in adopting agile methods suitable to their local circumstances, there is little guidance available on how to do so. Organizations, especially on the large-scale, currently lack systematic support for adopting agile methods in their complex software development settings. To address this important issue, this research proposes an agile software solution framework (ASSF) to both assistance in the assessment of the capability of the organization or team and tailoring of agile method in order to support the systematic adoption and improvement of agility in both agile and, incidentally, non-agile software development environments - especially formal and large environments. The ASSF has been incrementally developed by the iterative application of build, review and adjust research activities, which is called here a “qualitative empirical” research method. The ASSF is intended for use by agile coaches and consultants as a comprehensive information guide. The ASSF has two main components: framework characteristics and lifecycle management. The framework characteristics component incorporates 10 main elements or attributes to describe the agile-hybrid software development methodologies: (1) people (2) process, (3) product, (4) tools, (5) agility, (6) abstraction, (7) business value, (8) policy (9) rules and (10) legal. The framework lifecycle management component specifies the stages, practices and resources in order to support the systematic adoption and improvement of agility. The framework stages refer to an agility adoption and improvement lifecycle, its practices refer to an agility adoption and improvement process, and its resources refer to models, templates and toolkit that can be used during the agility adoption and improvement process such as the contextual analysis model, a key agility indicators index, an agility adoption and improvement model, an agility adoption and improvement scorecard, and an agile toolkit. The components of this framework have been empirically analysed and reviewed by experts from industry as well as the research community, and updated based on the feedback received. The results of this research indicated that the proposed ASSF framework may be considered reasonable for a gradual successful transition or adoption of agile practices in formal and large software development environments

Challenges of using software size in agile software development: A systematic literature review

Academic Papers at IWSM Mensura, IWSM-Mensura 2018; Beijing; China; 19 September 2018 through 20 September 2018Software size is a fundamental measure for software management. Size is used for a variety of purposes, such as benchmarking, normalization, and portfolio measurement, and it is frequently considered as the sole input of estimation. Estimations can be produced for various reasons; e.g., to predict effort, cost and duration of software development projects. There are different types of software size measures. Particularly in projects where agile methodologies are adopted, measurement becomes a significant challenge as it is perceived as a non-value-added task and records of tasks such as requirements identification are not always consistent. The difficulties of applying traditional size measurement techniques in agile contexts, however, do not diminish the need, and new methods and techniques are introduced to improve the manageability of the agile projects. In this paper, we discuss estimation and measurement approaches in relation with ―software size in agile contexts. Based on this review, we present the perceptions of software size and related challenges, such as misinterpretation of size, difficulties in implementation, and acceptability of the measurement processes. We anticipate that providing a baseline for the state of software size measures in agile contexts and presenting related challenges, particularly in terms of its acceptability by practitioners can shed light on the development of new techniques

Is agile project management applicable to construction?

This paper briefly summarises the evolution of Agile Project Management (APM) and differentiates it from lean and agile production and ‘leagile’ construction. The significant benefits being realized through employment of APM within the information systems industry are stated. The characteristics of APM are explored, including: philosophy, organizational attitudes and practices, planning, execution and control and learning. Finally, APM is subjectively assessed as to its potential contribution to the pre-design, design and construction phases. In conclusion, it is assessed that APM offers considerable potential for application in predesign and design but that there are significant hurdles to its adoption in the actual construction phase. Should these be overcome, APM offers benefits well beyond any individual project