Becoming Nimble the Agile Project Management Way

In dictionary terms, ?agile? means ?able to move quickly and easily?. In project management terms, the definition is ?project management characterized by division of tasks into short work phases called ?sprints?, with frequent reassessments and adaptation of plans?. This technique is popular in software development but is also useful when rolling out other projects.

Managing the Seven Agile Development Phases

  • Stage 1: Vision. Define the software product in terms of how it will support the company vision and strategy, and what value it will provide the user. Customer satisfaction is of paramount value including accommodating user requirement changes.
  • Stage 2: Product Roadmap. Appoint a product owner responsible for liaising with the customer, business stakeholders and the development team. Task the owner with writing a high-level product description, creating a loose time frame and estimating effort for each phase.
  • Stage 3: Release Plan. Agile always looks ahead towards the benefits that will flow. Once agreed, the Product Road-map becomes the target deadline for delivery. With Vision, Road Map and Release Plan in place the next stage is to divide the project into manageable chunks, which may be parallel or serial.
  • Stage 4: Sprint Plans. Manage each of these phases as individual ?sprints?, with emphasis on speed and meeting targets. Before the development team starts working, make sure it agrees a common goal, identifies requirements and lists the tasks it will perform.
  • Stage 5: Daily Meetings. Meet with the development team each morning for a 15-minute review. Discuss what happened yesterday, identify and celebrate progress, and find a way to resolve or work around roadblocks. The goal is to get to alpha phase quickly. Nice-to-haves can be part of subsequent upgrades.
  • Stage 6: Sprint Review. When the phase of the project is complete, facilitate a sprint review with the team to confirm this. Invite the customer, business stakeholders and development team to a presentation where you demonstrate the project/ project phase that is implemented.
  • Stage 7: Sprint Retrospective. Call the team together again (the next day if possible) for a project review to discuss lessons learned. Focus on achievements and how to do even better next time. Document and implement process changes.

The Seven Agile Development Phases ? Conclusions and Thoughts

The Agile method is an excellent way of motivating project teams, achieving goals and building result-based communities. It is however, not a static system. The product owner must conduct regular, separate reviews with the customer too.

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Quality Assurance

 

There is a truism that goes “The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory”.

While every consumer can probably relate to this idea, business enterprises offering goods and services are the ones that should heed this the most.

Quality Management Systems

The concept of quality was first introduced in the 1800’s. Goods were then still mass-produced, created by the same set of people, with a few individuals assigned to do some “tweaking” on the product to bring it to acceptable levels. Their idea of quality at that time may not have been that well-defined, but it marked the beginnings of product quality and customer satisfaction as we know it now.

Since then, quality has developed into a very basic business principle that every organisation should strive to achieve. Yet while every business recognises the importance of offering product and service quality, it is not something that can be achieved overnight.

If you’ve been in any type of business long enough, you should know that there is no “quick-fix” to achieving quality. Instead, it is an evolving process that needs to be continually worked on. And this is where the importance of having a workable Quality Management System (QMS) in an organisation comes in.

Whatever Quality tools and processes you need to implement the change needed in your organisation, we can help you with it. We are ready to work in partnership with your team to develop strategic systems which will produce significant performance improvements geared towards the achievement of quality.

What is a Quality Management System?

A Quality Management System is defined as the set of inter-related objectives, processes, and operating procedures that organisations use as a guide to help them implement quality policies and attain quality objectives.

Needless to say, the ultimate goal of every quality management system is to establish quality as a core value of the company among all employees, and across all products and services. Why? Because quality services make for happy customers, and satisfied customers ensure continued business for the company.

A Quality Management System does not stop with simply having a set of guidelines that the leaders of a company can easily have their organisation members accept and adhere to. Rather, effective QMS can be implemented when management provides a culture of pride and patience, which will inspire acceptance of individual and group responsibility.

In this manner, not only the heads of the organisation but the employees as well, will develop the desire to achieve company goals that will benefit:

  • All contributing teams;
  • The customers; and
  • The company as a whole.

Find out more about our Quality Assurance services in the following pages:

Virtualisation

Using an IT solution that can provide the fastest (but still reliable) disaster recovery process is essential for the success of any business continuity plan. Although virtualisation is still considered leading edge technology by many business continuity specialists, it definitely brings a promise that, once fulfilled, can result in the cheapest, fastest, and most comprehensive solution for business continuity.

One great advantage of virtualisation over traditional BC (Business Continuity) methods is the relatively cheaper cost needed to achieve a certain level of business continuity assurance. Thus, more companies will find it easier to reach their required minimum for BC assurance. By contrast, some BCPs (Business Continuity Plan) based on a physical environment require companies to invest more than what they are willing to in order to reach the same minimum level of assurance.

Virtual machines, which can already encapsulate your operating systems and their corresponding applications, can be transported as a file from one machine running a compatible hypervisor to another. This makes the business continuity tasks of backup, replication, and restoration simpler and faster.

As of 2008, about 54% of IT professionals in Europe were willing to implement virtualisation within a maximum of two years. Furthermore, the expected compound annual growth rate of installed virtualised servers from 2008 to 2012 is already pegged at 33%.

If you want your organisation to take advantage of the benefits of this revolutionary technology, we’d be more than willing to help you discover what it can do for you. Then once you decide to make that transition to virtualisation, we can guide you every step of the way.

  • As not all applications are suited for virtualisation (e.g. some are too demanding on I/O and memory access), we’ll start by reviewing your entire IT system to see which portions can be implemented on a virtualized environment.
  • Using virtualisation and replication, we can conduct disaster recovery tests using up-to-date data without interrupting operations in your main IT site. Running these tests will increase your team’s preparedness and will allow you to discover possible weak points.
  • Provide a simple but comprehensive protection and backup system that encapsulates not only data, but also system configurations and application installations. This kind of setup allows for faster and easier disaster recovery operations. Because of these same characteristics, you can enjoy zero downtime while performing scheduled maintenance operations.
  • Since virtual machines are hardware-independent and transparent to operating systems, we can help you run a mix of legacy and new systems as well as open source and proprietary systems, allowing for more flexibility in your BCP budgeting.

We can also assist you with the following:

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ISO in Energy management

Every industry has its own set levels of quality that are considered acceptable or desirable. Energy performance like any other field is governed by some set standards. These differ across regions but international standards do exist.

ISO 50001 is the international energy standard applicable to both large and small organisations irrespective of geographical, cultural or social conditions. It outlines the best energy management practices that are considered to be the best by specifying that an organisation must integrate an energy management system and institute an energy policy, objectives, targets, and action plans taking into account legal requirements and information related to significant energy use. The energy standard is applicable to organisations.

What’s the importance of attaining energy certification?

ISO certification in any industry is a demonstration of quality or that a service or product meets the expected service standards. In energy management, ISO certification is a demonstration that an organisation or company has implemented sustainable energy management systems, completed a baseline of energy use and, is committed to continuously improve its energy performance. In addition, ISO certification assists organisations in the following ways:

? Organisations are able to optimise the existing energy-consuming assets

? Offers guidance on bench-marking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reducing GHG emissions

? Creates transparency and facilitates communication on the management of energy resources

? Promotes energy management best practices and reinforces good energy management behaviours

? Assists facilities in evaluating and prioritising the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies

? Provides a framework for promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain

? Facilitates energy management improvements in the context of GHG emission reduction projects: The reduction of carbon emissions means therefore an organisation is able to meet government carbon reduction targets by demonstrating environmental credentials. The accruing benefits are many, ranging from increased investor confidence to more tender opportunities

Energy management software plays a vital role in helping organisations comply with energy standards through improved performance across the various functions in an organisation.

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