Investigative Report on Agile Management Methodology

Question: Discuss about the Investigative Report on Agile Management Methodology. Answer: Introduction: There are several developments methodologies that are used in a software development projects. The agile methodology is one of the best methodologies that can help the managers and developers to produce a best quality software project through a complex process. In the selected paper "Agile Project Management - benefits and challenges" by Kurup and Sidhardhan (2015), authors of the paper, described the different practices and methods that are used in the agile project management methodology, benefits of this methodology, scenarios in which the methodology is applicable, and the challenges that may be faced by the manager and team are discussed. In this article, the author described the different principles and technologies that are used in the agile methodology (Kruchten 2013). The agile management methodology is used for the development of software since it helps to deliver a software product that best meets requirements of the clients and with the minimal development cost in addition to this, the paper also describes the way agile project management methodology accommodates the change in the requirement of the clients or users (Turk, France and Rumpe 2014). Authors also described that due to the use of traditional development methodology, a project ends up with being over budgeted and the product is lately delivered to the clients. For the paper A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development by Dingsyr et al. (2012), it describes and critically analyzes the contents of the different research paper on agile project management methodology for software development. In this paper, the author described the way concept of agile project management has evolved. The paper also explains the different principles that are helpful in developing and delivering a quality product that meets the different requirements of the intended users (Kruchten 2013). This principle is also helpful in maintaining the balance between the flexibility of the agile methodology to accommodate the newer user requirements and control over the whole development process. This paper also describes the software development activity as a knowledge creation of activity (Kurup and Sidhardhan 2015). This paper also discusses the definition of the agile methodology according to the management and manufacturing industry. This paper also provides the description about how the agile project management methodology helps the development team to deliver working software products that are meeting the users requirements at regular time intervals. At last in the An Appraisal of Agile Software Development Process by Amir et al. (2013), it describes the engagement of different process of software development with the agile project management methodology. The above paper briefly describes the relation between the requirement engineering, software architecture with the agile software development project methodology. In agile project management methodology, it considers the client or user to be an integrated part of the development process (Dingsyr et al. 2012). According to the authors, the agile methodology concentrates on the communication between the developers and end users. It also tries to clarify the role of customers to specify the requirements of the software product which are consistent, correct and unambiguous. It also suggests that in a software development project, it is important to have a requirement engineer to correctly specify the requirements that are not clearly specified by the ordinary user due to the lack of technical knowledge (Dingsyr et al. 2012). Critical evaluation of the ideas In the chosen articles, agile methodology is briefly explained with the help of supportive theories. In the paper An Appraisal of Agile Software Development Process", it supports the use of agile management methodology in the light of fulfilling the user requirements, architecture of the developed software, etc. (Kruchten 2013). It helps the developer as well as user to clearly identify and develop the required software product. On the other hand according to Amir et al. (2013), argued in favor of the agile methodology using Scrum. This scrum is an incremental and iterative process that is used to manage any project or development of any software product. This process does not specify any practice or method for the development rather suggests certain management practices and tools in the different phases (Turk, France and Rumpe 2014). After each iteration Scrum introduces a set of new functionalities in the developed software product. This management practices helps the development t eam to avoid complexity and chaos during the different phases. Challenges with the implementation and ways to manage them For developing or managing a project using agile management methodology, the developers or team members need to have good business knowledge. In real scenarios it is not always possible to possess the knowledge about the domain like a client, therefore it results in loss of trust of the client on the development team (Kurup and Sidhardhan 2015). Again as the, agile methodology requires constant communication with the clients, therefore, it requires a good communication skill of the team members to develop a fully functional product that meets all the requirements of the users. In addition to this, the use of scrum; the management tool to check the progress and health of the project adds some overhead to the project manager (Amir et al. 2013). Consequently, these overheads become the reasons of late delivery or late completion of the project. In addition to this, most of the agile project management teams autonomously manage their different tasks; therefore it is almost impossible to dictate the team with different steps of the project. References Amir, M., Khan, K., Khan, A. and Khan, M.N., 2013. A., An Appraisal of Agile Software Development Process.International Journal of Advanced Science Technology,58, p.20. Dingsyr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V. and Moe, N.B., 2012. A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development.Journal of Systems and Software,85(6), pp.1213-1221. Kurup, D. and Sidhardhan, S.K., 2015. Agile Project ManagementBenefits and Challenges. Kruchten, P., 2013. Contextualizing agile software development.Journal of Software: Evolution and Process,25(4), pp.351-361. Turk, D., France, R. and Rumpe, B., 2014. Limitations of agile software processes.arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6600.