Agile Project Management: From Self-Managing Teams to Large-Scale Development

Agile software development represents a new approach for planning and managing software projects. It puts less emphasis on up-front plans and strict control and relies more on informal collaboration, coordination, and learning. This briefing provides a characterization and definition of agile project management based on extensive studies of large-scale industrial projects. It explains the circumstances behind the change from traditional management with its focus on direct supervision and standardization of work processes, to the newer, agile focus on self-managing teams, including its opportunities and benefits, but also its complexity and challenges. The main focus of the briefing is the four principles of agile project management: minimum critical specification, autonomous teams, redundancy, and feedback and learning. The briefing is intended for researchers, practitioners and educators in software engineering, especially project managers. For researchers, an updated state of the art will be uncovered, and the presentation will be based on current best evidence. For practitioners, principles, processes, and key success factors will be outlined and a successful large-scale case study of agile project management will be presented. For educators, the briefing will provide the basis for developing course material.