Applying Agile Project Management

Preparation
Imagine that you are the project manager of a critical project for an organization. The organization wants to implement an application on iPad and Android tablets that provides near real-time updates for the marketing executives and managers on the effectiveness and success of their marketing campaigns. Since this project is so critical to the overall financial health of the company, you were asked to complete this project in 3 months. Your business sponsors are very interested in your approach to manage this project and they are also demanding to see what the project team can deliver on a weekly basis.

Due to the tight deadline, the project team was assembled quickly with 10 team members of various backgrounds. There are three offshore developers in India and two QA testers in San Francisco, CA. The rest of the project team and the product owner are in Herndon, VA. The team members were unfamiliar with each other. Additionally, there are ethical issues. For example, a developer has been consistently blaming an analyst for his accent that has little to do with project development. Another QA tester rarely spoke out in the meeting, but consistently went to her management to complain about a couple of project team members’ lack of documentation which delayed her QA plan and test cases. When you started to run the project, you were told that the project deadline was moved up 2 weeks from the original deadline. With such a pressure on time, conflicts broke out and team morale is down. You have to help bring the project back on track by solving various conflicts and improve the collaborative work effort.

Note: You may create and/or make all necessary assumptions needed for the completion of this assignment.

Instructions

• Write a 10–12 page paper in which you:
• Suggest the Agile project management framework that is best suited for this project. Provide a rationale for your response.
• Create a project plan for this project based on your proposed framework through the use of MS Project or Excel. Note: List all major milestones, resources, tasks, and dependencies. Include tools such as a risk log to enhance your project plan.
• Propose at least five Agile techniques and tools that you will use to manage this project. Justify your response.
• Propose the fundamental strategies you will use to conduct requirements sessions and manage the multiple tracks of work on a daily basis.
• Determine the vital techniques you will use to manage conflicts and facilitate collaboration throughout the project. Provide at least two examples of these techniques to support your response.
• Determine the key techniques and tools you will use to monitor and control the progress of the project. Provide a rationale for your response.
• Speculate on the key differences and consequences if you were to manage the same project with a traditional project management approach instead of using Agile strategies. Justify your response.
• Suggest at least two methods you will use to control the quality of work. Provide a rationale for your response.
• Determine the prominent methods you would use to close the project. Provide a rationale for your response.
• Use at least six quality resources in this assignment. Note: Wikipedia and similar websites do not qualify as quality resources