Page 24 - Campus Technology, October/November 2018

IT TRENDS david raths
How Agile Project Management Can
Benefit IT Initiatives
Agile methodology builds trust with stakeholders and keeps them involved in setting goals and priorities — but it’s not necessarily the right approach for every project. Here are some best practices for agile success.
THE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE TEAM at George Washington University in Washington, DC, has changed the way it works with partners across GWU’s business and academic units. Rather than settling on all of a dashboard project’s parameters up front, they now work in two-week “sprints” and have a quarterly product release cycle. “During that transition from one release to the next, we meet with our business intelligence guidance team made up of community members across campus,” said Mike Wolf, director of business intelligence. “They tell us what the priorities are for the next release and we follow that process all the way through.”
More prevalent in the private sector than in government or higher education, “agile” project management breaks software projects up into short sprints of a few weeks. The traditional software develop- ment approach, in which requirements and budgets are firmly estab- lished upfront and each phase of a project is completed before mov- ing to the next, is referred to as “waterfall.” The goal of agile is to end up with fewer failed software development projects in which the internal customers are dissatisfied with the results.4
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | October/November 2018
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