5.3.1 Classic Project Management
In the software development industry, traditional project management or waterfall methodology is a well-known approach which is a sequential process of life-cycle model. As can be seen in Fig. 5.1, in this methodology every step must be completed before the next step can start. The waterfall methodology has been embraced by the software development industry, but also is well known in other industries including construction. However, there is an argument that this method is robust in simpler
Fig. 5.1 Waterfall software development workflow reproduced from Royce (1970)
domains when cause and effect has a known and direct relationship; but when vari- ability is high and change is inevitable the waterfall system does not work effi- ciently (Measey and Radtac 2015) because feedback is usually received only at the end stage when it is expensive, too late, and difficult to return to previous stages. For instance, a development team may spend 18 months building a service that doesn’t meet users’ needs at the end (Agile delivery Community 2016).
Some voices were raised against this method in the 1980s and 1990s (Owen and Koskela 2006) which subsequently led to developing the agile management method.
5.3.2 Agile Project Management
The agile project management idea can be traced back to ideas from a paper by Takeuchi and Nonaka in the January 1986 issue of the Harvard Business Review.
However, the agile concept did not gain attraction until Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber discussed the first agile method for software development in 1995 (Frank Cervone 2011). Later, in 2001, seventeen software developers gathered together in Utah and wrote the Agile Manifesto.
“We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more” (Beck et al. 2001a).
These concepts inspired twelve agile principles which cover customer satisfac- tion, welcoming changes, delivering working software frequently, face-to-face communication, and regular intervals team reflection (Beck et al. 2001b). These characteristics can help project team members to quickly adapt the unpredictable and rapidly changing requirements during project timeline (Frank Cervone 2011).
Agile management uses these changes as opportunities to enhance the value of the final product (Owen and Koskela 2006). The five phases of agile project manage- ment which are shown in Fig. 5.2 are:
• Envision: Determining project objectives, constraints, and community
• Speculate: Developing a feature-based release plan
• Explore: Running and testing features in a short iteration to reduce the risk of the project
• Adapt: Reviewing the delivered results and adapt as necessary
• Close: Conclude the project and review key learning (Highsmith 2009)
5.3.3 Benefits of Agile Management
Agile is focused on delivering business value through the frequent iteration in a shorter time framework (Measey and Radtac 2015). Many surveys and studies have been conducted to show benefits of using agile management (Highsmith 2009;
Vijayasarathy and Turk 2008; Owen and Koskela 2006). As can be seen in Table 5.1, the majority of respondents agreed on substantial improvement in productivity, quality, and business satisfaction in their project. Moreover, cost reduction is also reported as one the important agile benefits. In addition to these qualitative studies, a series of quantitative studies by Michael Mah pictures more tangible benefits of the agile management. Figures 5.3 and 5.4 summarise two of these studies (Highsmith 2009).
Figure 5.3 illustrates improvements in performance at Scientific Instrument Company between agile and non-agile projects which shows 83% improvement in cumulative defects. Figure 5.4 also shows general improvements in BMC software projects versus the industry norms. The most significant number is 58% improve- ment in the project schedule. Moreover, the chaos manifesto report from the Standish Group in 2011, as illustrated in Fig. 5.5, compares the results of using waterfall and agile management in the software development projects from 2002 to 2010 (Measey and Radtac 2015) which shows agile projects are three times more successful than waterfall projects.
However, implementing agile management has some difficulties. This method is relatively difficult to people who used to work with the traditional method. (Bowes 2014; Agile delivery Community 2016). The traditional waterfall method is a linear Fig. 5.2 Agile workflow
reproduced from Highsmith (2009)
61%
24%
83%
39%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Project Cost Project
Schedule Cumulative
Defects Staffing Scientific Instrument
Fig. 5.3 Improvement in agile project management against other method adapted from Highsmith (2009)
5%
58%
11%
130%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
120%
140%
Project Cost Project
Schedule Cumulative
Defects Staffing BMC Software
Fig. 5.4 Improvement in agile project management against industry norm adapted from Highsmith (2009)
Increase Productivity Reduce Cost
Improve quality Better customer
satisfaction
Version One
(Highsmith, 2009) 89% of respondents
66% of respondents
84% of respondents
-
Shine technology
(Owen and Koskela, 2006) 93% of respondents
49% of respondents
88% of respondents
83% of respondents
Vijayasarathy
& Turk
(Vijayasarathy and Turk, 2008)
6 out of 7
5.34 out of 7
6.18 out of 7
6.28 out of 7 Table 5.1 Improvement in agile project management
and sequential method, easy to understand and implement. On the contrary, if an agile method is implemented inappropriately, it can introduce extra inefficiencies (Bowes 2014). Research shows that organisational resistance, management apathy, and inadequate training are the most important barriers towards implementing agile project management (Vijayasarathy and Turk 2008).
Benefits of using agile have been proven in the IT industry and now in the UK, it is mandatory to use the agile approach to build and run government digital services (Agile delivery Community 2016). Having established that agile management offers significant improvements in project delivery, it is worth exploring the application of agile in the construction industry.