Introducing a New Project Management Methodology

Problem

"I was working as a Manager for a small software development group at the University of Florida. The team of nine people was using a waterfall methodology, but was having difficulty delivering features and software on time and within budget."

Actions taken

"I started out by researching other potential software development methodologies. I did a lot of reading about what other companies with similar difficulties had done to fix their problems, and I landed on Agile Scrum. Once decided upon, we went through the process of bringing in someone to talk to us, getting some training, and then slowly moving over to the new methodology."

"To start off with, we took two projects and managed those projects with an Agile Scrum methodology. We didn't want to buy a software system and then have to follow their exact system, so we used paper for our first two projects. This allowed us to find a system that worked for us, and then to find software to match this. Although we faced some difficulties with story estimation, we started seeing positive results almost immediately - things were being done by their deadlines, and the quality of the software we were producing was better as we were focusing on test-driven development."

"After about three months we began looking at software to match our process and settled on Jira, as it was flexible in terms of how you could use Agile. This meant if we wanted to tweak our process we would be able to easily. In addition, they had other products we needed at the time."

Lessons learned

"Ensure you do your research before changing methodologies - make sure you fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of the methodology you consider. Don't take this lightly, as your team will go through a big change."

"You should also be patient. We went a little too fast, and things may have gone more smoothly if I had taken a few more months to work through the new process fully."