The impact of agile methods on software project management

As more and more software projects engage agile methods, there are emerging patterns of success and failure. With growing adoption of agile methods, project managers increasingly need to understand the applicability to their projects and factors that drive key project performance characteristics. While some organizations affirm that agile methods solve all their problems, few have shown consistent success over a range of typical software projects. Agile methods have advantages, especially in accommodating change due to volatile requirements. However, they also present concomitant risks with managing the many dependent pieces of work distributed across a large project. Use of agile methods therefore presents a set of tradeoffs. This paper examines the impact of agile methods on the people involved in a project, the process under which a project is developed, and on the project itself in an attempt to allow project managers to evaluate the applicability using an agile method.