What is AgilePM?
Spend any decent amount of time in either software development or management, and chances are you’ll start hearing about a little thing called ‘Agile’. Put simply, this is an umbrella term for a loosely defined yet highly-respected management methodology, one that empowers organizations with superior efficiency, accountability, and, most importantly, quality.
Originally a development approach, Agile has since been translated into IT project management and a range of other departments and industries. It emphasizes flexibility, risk management, accountability, and iterative delivery in a way that can be widely applied. Indeed, there are hundreds of thousands of Agile project managers around the globe, and the number is increasing rapidly.
The popularity of Agile has led to the creation of several ‘frameworks’: well-defined Agile methodologies that have set tools and guidelines but still stick to the core pillars of the approach. Of all of these, the most popular is ‘Agile Project Management’, better known as ‘AgilePM‘.
AgilePM is based on the ‘Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)’ and the AgilePM Handbook from the Agile Business Consortium (we told you Agile was popular, didn’t we?) Since its 2010 release, over 130,000 AgilePM exams have been sat worldwide. The pass rate for AgilePM is also remarkably high: in 2018, 98.5% of students who took the AgilePM Foundation exam passed, while 94.7% of those who sat the AgilePM Practitioner exam became successfully certified.
That is not to say that getting certified in AgilePM is too easy or that the qualifications aren’t highly valued. With the wide adoption of the framework, global demand for practitioners is constantly rising. As such, AgilePM training can offer several benefits for career project managers, Agile team members, and businesses.
So, let’s take a closer look at AgilePM. How does it work? What does it have to offer? And why get certified via an AgilePM online training course?
How Does AgilePM Work?
AgilePM is a project management framework that fits projects of different types within any industry, sector, or location. It utilizes several tools, techniques, and best practices to deliver the benefits of Agile, such as:
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Defining short-term goals
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Delivering iterative benefits
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Delegating autonomy to team members
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Constantly reassessing targets based on changing circumstances and requirements
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Regularly collecting feedback from clients, customers, and stakeholders
It also teaches several specific Agile techniques, such as MoSCoW Prioritization and Timeboxing.
AgilePM departs from waterfall project management by encouraging practitioners to reassess targets and the overall strategy regularly to deliver results better suited to clients’ needs. At the same time, AgilePM offers a higher managerial control level than other Agile frameworks. This is down to its relationship with the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and can go a long way in reassuring managers and stakeholders who are more used to traditional methods.
At its heart, AgilePM is about bringing order to chaotic corporate environments. At the same time, it also encourages flexibility, sacrificing a certain degree of managerial control to empower staff with greater autonomy and speed.
How can AgilePM Certification Help my Business?
AgilePM is easy for businesses to adopt, regardless of whether or not they are used to using a well-defined methodology. Over the years, it has proven demonstrably effective and offers several key benefits:
- Quality – AgilePM training establishes criteria for reassessing a project at various stages in its lifecycle. AgilePM teams will also continually reexamine their work environments to ensure their targets are appropriate. For example, if a gap in the market created a demand for additional features, an AgilePM practitioner could recognize it and adjust their project accordingly, optimizing the resulting ROIs. Combined with constant testing and feedback, this approach ensures that end products consistently deliver quality based on accurate and up-to-date requirements rather than those defined at the start.
- Clarity – Organizations that do not use a defined project management methodology can be chaotic. Even with experienced managers, projects can become unfocused, wasteful, and unsure of direction. AgilePM can bring order to these environments, making projects more well-targeted and streamlined. It also strictly defines a project’s KPIs, providing a stricter level of clarity and significantly increasing the project’s probability of success. Finally, AgilePM emphasizes the importance of stakeholder and client engagement to ensure they are up to date with progress and have opportunities to provide feedback.
- Stakeholder management – AgilePM encourages teams to regularly address stakeholders, update them on project progress, and take feedback. This greatly increases the visibility of a project, reducing the potential for delays later on while also building stakeholder satisfaction.
- Risk management – The iterative style of Agile means that project teams are constantly reexamining their work to check for flaws and potential difficulties. Attempting to solve such issues later on in a project can create damaging bottlenecks as team members struggle to solve problems that have been allowed to fester. By following AgilePM, teams can ensure that their projects encounter little to no delays.
- Speed – AgilePM can help teams improve the speed and efficiency of crucial projects. The framework’s iterative approach creates short-term gains that can be enjoyed earlier on, keeping clients and stakeholders happy. At the same time, increased autonomy allows teams to produce results more quickly. Even taking AgilePM’s focus on reexamining targets and project environments into account, the framework can still offer a substantial increase in speed.
- End to top-down management – Unlike other project management frameworks like PRINCE2, AgilePM takes a lateral approach. Roles and responsibilities are defined early on in a project, and team members can work with greater autonomy. By increasing accountability and removing unnecessary bureaucracy, AgilePM can vastly improve the efficiency of a project. Having time to work independently can give team members the freedom to come up with new ideas to help achieve higher ROIs.
- Best of Agile – There are many sides to the Agile methodology and several tools and techniques to choose from. AgilePM contains many popular and demonstrably effective examples, including SCRUM, Timeboxing, and MoSCoW Prioritization.
- Ease of adoption – AgilePM is easy to integrate into a project team, even for businesses that are not used to using set methodologies. At the same time, it is also simple to combine AgilePM with existing practices, such as PRINCE2 Agile.
