Five Phases of Agile Project — World Of Agile
There are FIVE phases that an Agile project goes thru. The FIVE phases are
· Envision
· Speculate
· Explore
· Adapt
· Close
Envision Phase: — This phase is to determine the product vision and project scope, the project community, and how the team will work together. The term ‘envision’ is a clear departure from traditional phase names such as initiate and plan, which while subtle, is also significant. This is because when envisioning you inadvertently accept a level of mishap and are therefore ready to make any necessary adjustments, in contrast to a set plan which has more rigorous connotations. The envision phase covers the ‘Who? What? And how?’
Speculation Phase: Unlike planning, speculating establishes a target and direction, but at the same time, it indicates that we expect much to change over the lifetime of a project. Unlike speculation, plans are usually conjectured about the future where people often expect the result to come directly from the plan. Deviations from the plan are therefore viewed as negative unlike with speculation where results are generally viewed as positive. Speculation is only one piece of information that will be examined to determine our course of action when iterating. The result after speculating is a blueprint that outlines information about the products specification, platform architecture, resources, risk analysis, defect levels, business constraints and target schedules.
Explore Phase: Foundation of Explore Phase is “Action”. What is known as a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a collection of agents who explore to achieve a goal by interacting with each other according to a set of rules. A CAS experiments with various paths, selects and executes viable ones, compares the results against its goals and adapts as necessary. In a more project-specific sense, the project-manager’s goal is to help the team articulate and understand the goal and constraints, to help the team interact efficiently, to facilitate an effective decision-making process, and to be prepared for the inevitable eventuality of the project going off track.
Adapt Phase: Considering that Agile is of an exploratory nature, requiring speculation and hypothesis testing, it is only logical that a system is implemented allowing for team to respond effectively post-feedback. How a project adapts will depend on a good understanding of the information presented, an assessment of the projects progress, technical risks, and an ongoing competitive market analysis. Reacting to events is, generally speaking, more difficult than reacting to a plan, because the team has to answer three critical questions
· Are customers getting value from the project?
· Is the project progressing at a satisfactory level?
· Is the project team adapting effectively to changes imposed by management, customers and technology?
Close: A project close is both a phase and a practice that is often hurried through at the end of a project. Since available resources are usually scarce, people are moved onto the next project quickly, often without taking time to close up the last project or receiving credit for its completion. This is not only bad for team morale, but it is also a dysfunctional way of organizing a project, as members are unaware of the progress that has been made. There are several activities that should be included in the closing of a project, such as a celebration first and foremost, which serves two primary purposes. It provides a sense of closure to the project and an appreciation for those that have worked hard on the project. Projects that seem to go on and on without any closures are terrible for team morale. Another important activity is to close up open items by finalizing documentation and preparing required end-of-project administrative and financial reports. A final activity is conducting a project retrospective, which has already been done on a more minor scale in the iterative process. The retrospective at the end is primarily for inter-team learning, for one project to pass along to others in the organization the positives and negatives to build upon.
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