A cluttered project environment creates a cluttered mindset. A cluttered workflow process is like spaghetti, you don’t know where the start is or where it ends. There is a lot of overwhelming work that has to be done in the data and business intelligence industry to plot the next trends. Without top project management skills, you can’t survive. But, don’t worry there are project management frameworks that make project management smooth through project progress visualisation and progress tracking.
This article covers three agile project management frameworks: Scrum, Extreme programming(XP), and Kanban. We discuss how each project management framework works and how they can be combined to create a suitable project management framework for your specific project.
Why Should You Employ Project Management Frameworks?
You need project management frameworks so that you can:
- Track task progress: With project management framework you can create a list of tasks that have to be accomplished in a given period of time. When the task is overdue you will be alerted or you will be alerted a day before the project is a day before deadline. Also you can view all the tasks that have been accomplished thus helping you to prioritise and maximise efforts on tasks that have not been accomplished.
- Collaborate and assign tasks: Many platforms that deliver project management frameworks such as Trello and Jira allow you to add as many teammates in one workspace. This enables you to assign different people to various tasks. You can also check their progress on the project board or card list.
- Detailed task processes: Each task has a card, with this card you can add details such as links to important resources and the description of the task. These details will go far in helping the individual who has been assigned the task to comprehend it fast. Also, we are humans and we forget, it’s always nice to go back to a task that has detailed descriptions that help you get back on track swiftly.
- Project visualisation: Project management frameworks give you a holistic view of all the tasks available in the workspace. This helps you to know where you are stuck. Are there many tasks in the Review section or Pending section? These are the types of questions that help you to know where you have to spend more of your time. If there are many tasks in the Review section you have to spend more time reviewing the tasks and troubleshooting any problem that causes many tasks to be stuck in the Review section.
Picture description: The above image shows a Trello Dashboard that gives you a holistic view of all cards in different stages.
Extreme Programming Project Management
Many people are familiar with the Kanban and Scrum project management framework even though there is another framework called Extreme programming (XP). This framework focuses on software development projects and adds more details on how a specific customer feedback implementation task is done and when it should be done in an iterative approach. This approach focuses on reinforcing software development practices that’s why it dictates how tasks are done.
The Extreme Programming methodology is different from the other project management framework because it has a say on how tasks are executed.
This framework has to be set up by an experienced developer who knows XP practices in a definitive way. If the framework is fed with the right and customised techniques for the software development project it will yield high results.
Since this framework revolves around implementing customer feedback it is suitable for teams that are consistently in touch with their clients and are adaptable when it comes to making changes. In addition, you need to have good coding skills to ensure that the right changes are made quickly.
The main goal of the XP framework is to ensure that the code is highly readable and organised and most of all to ensure developers are following the right steps when executing a task.
Here are the core values of XP:
- Communication and feedback: For issues to be resolved, one has to speak up about the system problem they see and how it can be solved. You have to open up to communicate better. You also have to be consistently fetching feedback from your clients to create user stories. After gathering the feedback you’ve to make changes and deploy better applications.
- Simplicity comes first: To make any workflow or codebase understandable you have to choose the simple path. When starting a task make sure that you are starting with the least complex item or step.
- Listen carefully: You have to talk less and listen effectively to ensure that you can comprehend project requirements and customer feedback very well.
- Testing: You have to test all components wherever necessary to ensure that there are no flaws in production and the right customer feedback is implemented.
- Coding: Your code has to follow the best practices. You can do this by continuously integrating changes, testing code, practising pair programming.