How Agile and Project Management Can Coexist

Through the years—until agile software development took hold, that is—project management provided visibility to stakeholders and helped guide product development. However, as agile has risen to prominence with its de-emphasis on formal project planning, there are gaps that many organizations need to fill. James Hannon says that organizations now need to deal with the conundrum: Can agile and project management really coexist? Today’s manager must decompose both the standard project management flow and the agile development flow to look for symmetry and compatibility in their parts. This analysis will show that the agile backlog planning and sprint planning are excellent candidates to be integrated with the planning process from PMI. The analysis also shows that the best of the PMI methodology and agile can be woven together to give a renewed sense of agility and a vibrant logical approach to take on complex projects. The end result is a viable integration plan that you can use.