Agile Project Management | Explained in 10 Minutes

agile project management explained in less than 10 minutes let's get into it in this video I'll cover what agile project management is and why it's so important in one sentence agile project management it's a flexible and iterative

approach to delivering a project it's a really great framework to choose if you're incorporating a lot of changes or if you're in a project that's really early on and there's a lot of feedback that you need to incorporate in order to reach that fin Fin and state project so

what does agile project management mean well if we break down agile it basically means being flexible being able to deal with changes having the ability to roll with the punches again this video is focused on the really high level Concepts so we're not going to dive into

the rabbit hole on what combine boards are and what Sprint backlogs are Etc but what you should know is the agile methodology it focuses on having really structured approaches to dealing with changes to dealing with iterations and

to collecting feedback so that you can make informed decisions on any changes to your product or project moving forward let me give you a practical example let's say you're working on the greatest new social media app it Rivals Tik Tok you think it's going to be a great hit and let's say you're super

early on you've just put together your minimum viable product or your MVP it's the first working model of what you envision this great social media app to be well when you're this early on let's say you don't have that many users and it's just been going around Word of

Mouth how do you know if your product and if the overall project will be successful well there's some really important things to think about number one how differentiated your product is in the market is it filling a gap or a need that maybe Tik Tok and other apps

are not and number two getting feedback from your users is this something that folks will actually want to use especially if you're this early on to be successful your users and your customers feedback that's going to be really key because of this what approach would be

really beneficial here well the agile approach would be a really good fit because the framework is focused on getting feedback in shorter intervals a factors in getting feedback from your users being able to deal with changes and then rolling forward with those said changes so what is the agile methodology

and how is it Incorporated in project management so the main components of agile are iterative development collaboration flexibility some sort of meeting Cadence and some sort of way to manage your teams with tools when we say iterative

development that means making progress through small changes in a practical sense what this can mean is if you're a baker and you have a new chocolate chip recipe that you're rolling out you don't quite know if you've hit your mark yet you're not sure if this recipe is what

everyone wants so what you do is you write down the ingredients that you're using you try try to find a Baseline and then you find five of your customers who are chocolate chip enthusiasts you let them try your initial recipe and you get their feedback you come to realize all

five of them they actually prefer a lot more chocolate chips than what you're using so because of that you review the changes you then iterate on your recipe and then you create a new recipe that incorporates more of these chocolate chips you roll it out again your customers come back raving about the

chocolate chips they love now they think the dough is a little bit too thick in this example you can see you're constantly iterating you're making changes to the final product product being the cookie and ultimately you're incorporating a lot of feedback

from your customers from your users in order to reach that endstate goal which is delivering a product or a project that your users and folks will be happy with in a project management framework what this looks like is you're first putting together a plan you're putting

together there a plan for your product you're then thinking about the design how you're going to roll it out and what it looks like you then roll out your product in hopes of getting feedback and learning from it once you've rolled it out you get a lot of really useful information that you take back to your teams to discuss about how you can make

things better you review that feedback and then ultimately come up with a decision on how you're going to change and move forward in that development so with the chocolate chip recipe example we followed an iterative development cycle which can be really helpful when you're

dealing with a product that you're testing for the first time if it's relatively newer or if you're just unsure about how the public will be receptive to it it builds in that slack and that flexibility with allowing you to deal with changes it's really efficient because it's expecting you to

deal with changes so it's factoring in these shorter intervals of time for you to get feedback review it with your teams and then decide on how you're going to to deal with these changes moving forward with any project having collaboration is really critical

especially for the agile methodology if you're dealing with a lot of feedback and if there are a lot of changes that potentially may happen it's really important that you're not the sole decision maker here you want to be methodical with how you assess the feedback these internal feedback sessions are what we call Sprints one of

the more popular approaches to the iterative development life cycle is the usage of what we call Sprints a Sprint is basic basically a defined typically shortened window of time dedicated to completing a set of tasks in the hopes

of making progress towards your endday goal in the case of our chocolate chip cookie recipe example you've rolled out the recipe and you reive feedback that you needed more chocolate chips so what you do is you write that down as one of your tasks figure out the optimal number

of chocolate chips to put in this cookie you're holding a meeting with your internal team members in this case this can be the baker this can be your supplier so on and so forth your goal is to find the optimal number of chocolate chips at the end of 2 weeks to be able

to roll out the recipe again to your customers in hopes of wowing them in order to reach that goal you're meeting with your teams on a regular Cadence in this case this can mean daily and testing the different recipes out and finally at the end of that twoe Sprint

you formulated what you think is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever so you roll it out to your customers you get their feedback and it's glowing you've hit the mark as your customers are biting into those cookies and you're getting their feedback that's what we

call the Sprint review it's where your stakeholders are reviewing the development in the product they're giving you feedback and you're collecting it to review with your teams after receiving your customer feedback thankfully it being mostly positive you then hold a Sprint retrospective and

that's effectively a learn lessons meeting where you sit together with your internal team members you sit together with the baker with the supplier and you let them know here's how our customers felt you go over what went great you go over what went wrong and you review any

lessons that you learned so you can make sure the same mistakes don't happen again you realize that your customers they're very happy with the chocolate chip quantity but they're looking for a cookie that's a little bit more crisp and your is a bit too thick for them so then that kicks off another Sprint so

for the next 2 weeks your primary objective is to find the right thickness of a cookie and to really get that dough right from the cookie example number one you can tell that I'm a huge foodie and number two hopefully you can see the Practical implications of what a Sprint

can mean in real life this was just one small example Sprints are commonly used When developing new software Technologies or products as you can imagine you're constantly reaching out to you users getting feedback and the hopes of developing something that folks will use so what are the differences

between agile and waterfall project management as we discussed agile is primarily focused more on continuous feedback changes and then iterating your product to reach that final endstate goal whereas the waterfall approach is a lot more structured you have a very

linear approach to getting tasks done in order to reach the endstate goal ultimately both are really useful tools it really depends on the context and the type of project that you're dealing with in terms of which one would be better for you if you don't know what waterfall project management is I made a

quick video explaining everything you need to know about it I'll link it right here so max why is agile project management so important to know well as a project manager the more tools you have in your tool belt the more successful you'll be with the agile methodology it's another really useful

framework and it provides you with a structure for how to deal with these changes in a very methodical way when when you think about projects there really is no one size fits-all it's really important to understand what your project entails what your goals are what you need to be delivering who your

clients are who your customers are and using all these tools and Concepts and thinking really critically about what makes the most sense the best project managers that I know there are ones who are able to adapt with change there are ones who have a vision and who come

prepared with a framework and a vision for how to deal with the project the more you know the more you're able to apply the more you apply the more experience you have and all that deep rich experience it really helps to set you up for success for your next project thank you so much for watching I hope

you found this video both helpful and informative as always drop a like comment below if you have any questions and we'll catch you all in the next video