Can the culture of the organisation/team affect projects? Could implementing project leaders drive the organisation forward? It is known that a great first step for any organisation is to ensure their project leaders are trained and fluent in the discipline of project management. Many big firms have expressed their concerns about a lack of understanding and have failed to embrace the value of project management [More]

Project management is critical to the success of most projects. Many web development projects that I have worked on generally have been run well from a management point of view but tended not to use the agile scrum technique which limited the overall scope of the project and tended to fall away from the concept of a ‘shared vision’. However, it could be argued that without management, project teams may pursue the wrong project, may not include the right mix of personalities or skills, or may not deliver as much value as possible, which could lead to an extended timeframe and potential increase in costs and the client left unsatisfied. For a team to succeed with agile development it is essential that a shared vision be established. The vision must be shared not just among developers on the development team but also with others within the company including account managers and designers. If the shared vision isn’t communicated or is imprecise or changing, the project can always fall back on its detailed (proposal/analysis meeting) lists of tasks and procedures. This is not the case on an agile project and agile project participants use the shared vision to guide their day-to-day work much more actively. Agile Responsibilities The project: Product Owner: The Product Owner establishes nurtures and communicates the product vision. The Product Owner achieves initial and on-going funding for the project by creating initial release plans and the initial Product Backlog. The project owner would be involved throughout the project from initial analysis meetings to project sign-off. Manage the ROI: Product Owner: The Product Owner monitors the project against its ROI goals and an investment vision. The Product Backlog is updated and prioritized to ensure that the most valuable functionality is produced first and built upon. The Product Owner prioritizes and refines the Product Backlog and measures success against expenses. Priorities are set to fit in with people workloads; each project has a priority set against it which has to be managed within the team. Manage the development: The Team: During the development process the team selects and develops the highest-priority features from the project breakdown. Collectively, the team expands Product breakdown items into more explicit tasks on a Sprint Backlog and then manages its own work and self-organizes around how it desires to complete the tasks. The team manages itself to its commitments. Manage the process: The Scrum Master: The Scrum Master is responsible for setting the team up for success by ensuring the project and organizational culture are optimized for meeting the ROI goals of the project. This involves organizing a Sprint Planning Meeting (SCRUM), a Sprint Review Meeting enables the team to get away from outside disturbances, holding brief Daily Scrum meetings, and removing obstacles to progress. Project sign-off / Completion: Product Owner: The Product Owner makes decisions about when to create an official go-live date alongside its priority. The Product Owner makes these decisions in a manner consistent with the investment vision that has been established for the project. Each project will have a certain window for it to be released i.e. before peak season, and could face seasonality.

The series will discuss what web site security is and the technologies involved, the user experience and what and end user would (or should) be looking for to give them piece of mind that a web site is secure and finally some of the specific things that need to be considered (including potential pitfalls) when running a secure web site. [More]

As part of the Account Management process at EAOM, we have taken up the concept of Agile Project Management as a way of driving the projects forward. We believe Agile Project Management has improved how our projects are controlled and how the outcomes of the project are achieved within the organisation [More]