How to

Modernise Your Project Workflow

• Most project management techniques taught at universities are too complex (eg. PRINCE2, CPM, PERT, CPM).

• They’re not suited for digital projects, like building a website, making an app, or running a marketing campaign.

• Digital products are malleable: they’re easily changed, adjusted, and improved.

• For example, once you build a bridge, that's it. You can't go back, refactor, improve incrementally, fix a bug, or pivot and change everything.

• Redesigning a website or rewriting an app from scratch also costs, but not as much as tearing down a bridge and rebuilding it.

Plus, code and design are never truly finished.

• Big, mission-critical projects need big, complex frameworks.

• Digital projects on the other hand only need flexible principles and a tool or two.

• The principles that are better suited for digital projects, as summarized in the Agile Manifesto

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile Principles

Translation:

“Don't bother planning, something's gonna change anyway.

The best thing you can do is listen to your client/users, see how they use the product, and iterate until they're satisfied.”

• That's all there is to being agile.

• Experts and consultants sell trademarked methodologies, but they are overkill for smaller companies; plus their complexity goes against the core agility tenants.

All agile methodologies presuppose that projects change.

• Some give you general pointers on what you should aim for (Lean),

• Some give you concrete tools (Kanban)

• Some are all-encompassing prescriptions for the entire workflow (Scrum).

• Lean is agile taken to the extreme.

• It advocates delivering a working product (MVP) as fast as you can and then work based on the feedback.

• "Fail fast" is a common advice for startups that best embodies the lean spirit.

Lean

• Unlike Lean, which is more of a philosophy, Kanban is a concrete tool you can use.

• It’s a board that helps you visualise processes that happen at the same time.

• Most digital agencies and development teams use Kanban because it's simple, effective, and flexible.

Kanban

• The most popular framework for software development is Scrum.

• It prescribes how everything about a project should function (how to organize a team, communicate, choose and estimate work, and track progress).

• Scrum isn't the most efficient use of your resources, but it's standardized, easy to implement, and most developers are familiar with it.

Scrum

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