Agile project management is an iterative approach to project management, in contrast to traditional project management also known as Waterfall, which relies on a linear, sequential approach. Agile focuses on the product, on flexibility, communications, and the expertise of collaborators.
In this day and age when companies need to adapt to the shifting demands of the industry, agile project management is a technique that one must consider implementing. Its practitioners are encouraged to constantly refer to the Agile Manifesto and the 12 Agile Principles in order to keep their projects and systems on track.
Waterfall relies heavily on in-depth planning at the start of the project to define a clear objective and send them through fixed phases or stages, whereas agile project management providers emphasize the rapid delivery of a working model and succeeding incremental modifications through a number of iterations.
Agile in Project Management Table of Contents
Agile is borne out the historical needs of projects to minimize the impact of unforeseen changes and other project management software trends. Today, agile practitioners particularly like the flexibility that the methodology offers: unlike Waterfall wherein it’s proven to be incredibly costly or impractical to go back and make changes, agile allows teams to address new requirements or new market realities easily by making quick changes to the product. Modular and incremental changes are just not possible with the holistic Waterfall model without dragging the entire product contingent previously involved.
Agile encourages constant feedback from the end-users in order to help the developers and the product owner define the functionalities that they would integrate into the succeeding builds. Cross-functional teams work on iterations of a product over a period of time, the work organized into a backlog that is prioritized based on client needs. The backlog serves to constantly remind each member that the goal of each iteration is to produce a working product.
Agile values teamwork, accountability, and face-to-face communication. It calls for stakeholders and developers to work together to ensure the product meets company goals.
How does agile work?
When we talk about agile project management, the first thing that comes to mind is Scrum, one of most commonly used implementations of agile and one of its best definitions. Discussing Scrum, therefore, answers the question: what is agile in project management?
Iterations allow partial and regular deliveries, starting with what the client deems the most important features. Each iteration is limited by a set schedule, called sprint.
Scrum is particularly useful for projects where early results are necessary, or where requirements are constantly changing. This prevents deadlines from being exceeded for longer periods and allows the development team to react quickly before costs go through the roof.
Scrum is defined by a set of roles, ceremonies, and tools. Roles include the product owner, the Scrum Master—essentially the coach of the team—and the Scrum team.
Meanwhile, ceremonies or meetings usually come in the form of sprint planning, daily stand-up, sprint demo, and sprint retrospective.
Typical Scrum tools include a Scrum board, user stories, and burndown chart. The Scrum board allows the whole team to visualize the sprint backlog—to do, work in progress, and done. The board usually involves index cards, Post-It notes, or a whiteboard.
On the other hand, user stories indicate a software feature from the customer’s perspective, which may include the type of user, what they want, and why they want it.
A burndown chart shows all current outstanding work, to warn the team if things are not going according to schedule.
Should you go for agile adoption?
Despite well-known successful implementations of agile, you would do well to realize that the opposite also happens: there are also cases where attempts at agile adoption have not met their expected results. Agile is no magic rune, and unleashing its full power depends on some essential factors.
In general, if your product is like most of those Android applications in the Google Play market and where time to market, lean but expert teams are easily available, and direction of trends and user preferences are easier to spot, then most likely agile would suit your team well. On the other hand, if your product is more like Windows PC operating system where long-term development and new feature sets are clearly spelled out, then Waterfall should do well to meet your development needs.
When does agile project management work?
Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) features a fascinating case study of how it helped Accenture successfully implement agile to meet its global operations through what is called a scaled and distributed agile delivery, made more impressive when you consider how Accenture operates across multiple time zones and manpower cultures.
Among other things, the following steps undertaken by SAFe® and Accenture stood out:
- Implementing processes that would effectively enable seamless cooperation and collaboration of different Scrum teams
- Enabling synchronized iterations across timelines to maintain smooth adaptation and timely deliveries
- Identifying scopes and features that are best met by Waterfall or Agile
- Developing a highly effective status tracking across global teams
- Having well-defined criteria in selecting a local and remote component in the organization
When agile project management doesn’t work?
The costly launch failure of Healthcare.gov is generally attributed to the confusion of the process methodologies required. Moreover, the expertise of the people involved, not only in agile principles but also software development, has been called into question.
Unlike in the case of Accenture where certain features were clearly sorted out best done through Waterfall or Agile, the US Healthcare.gov development team seemed to be under the impression that one can combine Agile and Waterfall throughout various sprints and iterations.
The project used agile iterations during development but was released in one major roll-out (a Waterfall principle). Beta stages were bypassed and, instead, developers relied heavily on internal assessment that the site failed to fully grasp actual user experience by the time of the roll-out. In short, Agile practices were used to effect a Waterfall result.
It doesn’t work that way, so from this it is clear you should clearly ensure people in your teams are previously trained to be well aware of the distinction between Agile and Waterfall working principles and methodologies.
Most SaaS project management software solutions today are agile-adaptive, like monday.com.
What are examples of agile project management software 2025?
What is agile in project management but the ability to release the product in iterations, while its features are being perfected. If you feel this methodology fits your project, there are plenty of project management apps out there. Here are some of them and their key features.
monday.com
Focusing on its core strengths in social communication and internal information-sharing, monday.com has consistently been a top choice in the agile-based project management software department. A friendly and responsive customer service staff ensures that it stays there. Collaboration starts with a board showing who is working on what under a specific level of completion. From there, teams could then quickly add rows to comment on teammates’ work or simply drag and drop the required files. Team members get notifications in real-time through the mobile or desktop application. If you want to go agile, monday.com should be at the top of your shortlist. For the sheer amount of features and capabilities it offers, monday.com’s basic and enterprise plans have friendly prices. Subscription packages start at $8/seat/month but the vendor also offers an Individual plan for free.
Wrike
A SaaS-based project management and collaboration application, Wrike is designed around a minimalist multi-pane user interface. Its project management feature enables capabilities to track dates and dependencies associated with projects, manage assignments and resources, and track time. It includes an interactive Gantt chart, a workload view, and a sortable table that can be customized to store project data.
Its collaboration feature aids conversations, asset creation, and decision-making by teams. These include Wrike’s Live co-editor, discussion threads on tasks, and tools for attaching documents, editing them, and tracking their changes. Wrike uses an “inbox” feature and browser notifications to alert users of updates from their colleagues and dashboards for quick overviews of pending tasks. Wrike is available as native Android and iOS apps, both available offline and sync when the connection is restored.
ConnectWise Manage
ConnectWise Manage is a professional service automation software equipped with a great number of features, including account management, billing, chat, cloud billing solutions, help desk, and inventory management system. It also has a project management module that allows for cross-departmental collaboration, provides management-level visibility, and automates project and task delegation. Moreover, its reporting capabilities increase visibility on projects and individual tasks and thereby also increase accountability among stakeholders. With ConnectWise Manage, you can streamline your business workflow, efficiently manage your resources, and ultimately improve your revenue.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a SaaS-based application for collaboration and work management developed and marketed by Smartsheet.com, Inc. It features a spreadsheet-like interface to assign tasks, track project progress, manage calendars, share documents and manage other works. Each row in a smartsheet may have files attached to it, emails stored within it, and a discussion board associated with it. When a new smartsheet is created, notifications are pushed out to staff to populate its rows and columns. As information is updated, other smart sheets tracking the same task, project, or datapoint are updated automatically. The service also has alerts for when a task deadline is coming up and keeps track of document versions.
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is a project management software packed with features like task management, task automation, time tracking, charts and reporting, and issue tracking and SLA. Its intuitive interface allows users to easily navigate and use its features with little to no learning curve. Its features are also highly customizable, which means users can work with their preferred layouts and workflows and become more efficient in accomplishing tasks.
The product aims to empower users to achieve project goals within the set deadline and budget. The software is designed to make an entire project lifecycle more efficient. For instance, its Gantt charts allow for easier visualization of project status and also easier tracking of dependencies. It also boosts transparency with its time-tracking software that produces relevant comprehensive reports and generates invoices.
Zoho Projects integrates with applications from the same vendor, Google applications, Microsoft applications, iCal, Zapier, Slack, and more.
Replicon
Replicon is a software suite for time tracking that includes tools for accurate project management. This unified time and expense tracking software solution provides complete visibility into projects which results in transparency and well-managed relationship with clients. The four modules included in the Replicon time tracking suite are TimeBill, ProjectTime, Expense, and TimeOff. These tools enhance time and resource management, while at the same time allowing teams to validate billable hours. Replicon easily integrates with out-of-the-box project management tools, HR platforms, billing systems, and payroll processing software such as Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Oracle, Zendesk, Salesforce, and Slack, among others.
elapseit
elapseit is a workforce management solution that combines resource planning, time tracking, and project management. Its simple and intuitive interface hosts several powerful tools for collaboration, business intelligence, and planning and forecasting, among others. Its advanced features can support the complex workflows and processes of even large enterprises.
ProntoForms
ProntoForms provides mobile solutions to remote workers. It automates mobile workflows, makes data collection in the field easier, and allows organizations to monitor and improve field processes. Some industries that benefit from ProntoForm are heavy manufacturing, medical device manufacturing, oil and gas, utilities, construction, and services. Right now, thousands of businesses are leveraging this user-friendly, secure, and scalable solution. The majority of ProntoForms users report reduced administrative burden (89%), increased technician job satisfaction (83%), and improved first-time fix rate (65%).
Celoxis
Celoxis is a highly customizable and comprehensive project management solution. It has features for project request tracking, project planning, portfolio management, project accounting, resource management, team and client collaboration, and more. Its dashboard and reporting tools give leaders real-time visibility on business activities. It also facilitates efficient communication among team members as it provides them with features like a shareable calendar, online discussion spaces, version control, and activity stream. In addition to these, external collaboration is also made easy with a free client portal. The product is optimized for mobile use and for integration with other business applications like Google Drive, Microsoft Excel, Jira, Quickbooks Online, Zapier, and Salesforce.
Daylite for Mac
Daylite for Mac is a comprehensive CRM system that works seamlessly with Apple products. It allows users to organize everything—from notes to emails to sales opportunities—in one platform. It also has a dashboard that makes it easy to track the status of various projects. Daylite for Mac can hold every work information you may need and makes it easier to access them with just a few clicks.
Fiix
Fiix is an online system that helps you determine the optimal time for performing preventative and scheduled maintenance of equipment and assets, work orders, parts and supplies, and more. With Fiix, you can ensure that your data is safe during maintenance as it comes with world-class security features. You can also track and generate reports about everything you do within this software. Plus, you can identify work orders that are causing problems with the product’s AI-generated reports.
ManagerPlus
ManagerPlus is an enterprise asset management software that fits the needs of businesses in various industries, including construction, fleet, government, and agriculture. It comes with 10 modules; some of which are facility management, word order management, vendor management, and preventive maintenance. As it has tools for managing inventory, assets, and maintenance, all in just one platform, it helps businesses save on the cost of operations and increases ROI. This product also comes in a mobile version so busy professionals can use it to work on the go.
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