6 Agile Project Management Approaches For Your App Development

Mobile applications are at the epicenter of every business plan today. With emerging technologies and newer approaches,  the development of applications has gained traction and has brought some new challenges. One of these challenges is project management of the app development.

Project management is a collaborative use of tools, techniques, skills, and knowledge to manage the project and achieve the best results. Since the agile methodology has been utilized the app development projects have been on the higher side of performance with lower costs and less development time.

But there are a myriad of Agile approaches and choosing the right approach is important for your project management and thus here we are exploring six such approaches that you can use for project management.

• 1. Scrum:

Scrum is an agile methodology that is considered to be the best for enterprises looking for a more organized and structured project management approach. An approach derived straight from the rugby field. In rugby, a scrum is a tangle of heavy people who strain against each other to acquire a rugby ball. 

Scrum approach enables the project management teams to break down the project into 15-30 days sprints at the end of which they get together to discuss the outcomes and shortfalls of the sprints. They apply smaller increments with every sprint and avoid the constraints of traditional project management.

Benefits of Scrum:

1. Scrum uses sprints that are pre-defined with a time period of 15-30 days.
2. Each team member commits to a specific amount of work for the project.
3. Velocity is used as a default metric for planning and processing.
4. Scrum teams are cross-functional and can do work across departments.
5. Breaking down the project into sprints helps achieve results faster.
6. It uses an incremental approach over several sprints
7. The responsibility of the sprint backlog is not shared and is owned by a specific team.
8. The scrum board is replenished after each sprint that is completed.

2. Kanban: 

Kanban is considered to be a scheduling system for lean and other Just In Time processes. Kanban process utilizes a particular type of cards, these cards can be either virtual or physical. These cards move through the entire process from start to the end. The whole point of using the kanban cards is to keep a constant flow of the Kanban so that the inventory created is according to the inventory needed at the end of the process.

Kanban doesn’t follow the iterative method like other agile methodologies and yet it enables the development to be faster, leaner and highly responsive. Though not an iterative process, kanban is an incremental process.

Benefits of Kanban:

1. It provides better visibility with the use of extensive backing to each task.
2. It improves the flow efficiency of the project.
3. Kanban provides higher productivity using cycle time and throughput as key metrics.
4. It enables the team to pull work into the mix only if it can be done by them.
5. It reduces the context switching to keep the teams focused on the project.
6. Kanban induces more flexibility through effective backlog management.

3. Hybrid:

Hybrid project management is considered as the best of both worlds as it combines the conventional method with the waterfall approach and combines with the latest agile approach to achieve a more reliable and fruitful hybrid approach. It breakdowns the project into a hierarchal manner and yet each hierarchy has iterations that use the agile approach to achieve better project management.

The planning phase of this method includes a waterfall-like approach and execution of the project with the delivery follows an agile approach. It can handle the incremental iterations and accommodate any requirement changes during the course of the project.

Benefits of Hybrid:

1. The planning phase can be effective with the use of the waterfall approach.
2. The agile approach used for execution provides faster results.
3. Predefined budget constraints and documentation can be managed easily.
4. Flexibility, transparency, and frequent communication can be achieved through the use of the agile approach.
5. A powerful system can be created to streamline development while remaining flexible to include constantly changing requirements.

4. Bimodal:

The bimodal approach is for the project management teams working on both the long-term and short-term projects. Enterprises can exploit this feature and hire ios developer or developers from other platforms to develop apps using this approach. The project teams use different mechanisms to deliver the results and report to different organizational entities. Yet they communicate with each other to share several ideas and results.

Benefits of Bimodal:

1. It can be used for both long-term and short-term projects.
2. Teams stay in constant communication.
3. It allows the development of the application much faster.
4. It helps keep the balance between maintaining IT system infrastructures and yet includes innovations. 

5. Lean: 

It eliminates anything that doesn’t add value to the project. The codes written by developers are written as prototypes and after fixing the bugs and errors, these codes are executed and that is why this approach is known as a constant learning approach. The project is developed through late decision to accommodate the requirements and short development cycles to develop apps faster.

Benefits of Lean:

1. Eliminates waste.
2. It amplifies learning and creates knowledge.
3. Allows deciding late for requirements inclusion.
4. Faster delivery of results.
5. Empowers the project team.

6. XP(Extreme Programming):

It is considered as the technical approach of all the agile approaches. It combines the technical prowess of developers with agile project management skills and provides an excellent solution. It is based on Test Driven Development(TDD), Feature Driven Development (FDD) and Behavior Driven Development(BDD). 

Benefits of XP:

1. XP eliminates unproductive activities and reduces the costs and allows developers to focus on coding.
2. It helps in risk management of the project.
3. The project has more visibility and accountability can be established.
4. A working app can be achieved faster.
5. Constant feedback can be received and incorporated.