The Underlying APM Values

According to Griffiths (2007), the popularity of agile methodologies in other industries started around 2002 and therefore the methodologies are still evolving. Since APM is a culmination of a set of principles and concepts from the software industry (Chin, 2004; Conforto and Amaral, 2008), the information on its application in some industries is still limited. In light of this it can be gleaned that for successful APM adoption in other industries it is important to understand its values since they are the basis upon which its principles are derived (Alleman, 2005). The original APM values as agreed at the Agile Manifesto declaration of 2001 are shown in Appendix 1. It can be seen that some of these values were more biased towards software development approaches because the declaration was initially meant for that industry (Fitsilis, 2008). Over the years, however, with the success of APM in IT (Owen et al, 2006) its popularity in other industries increased (Griffiths, 2007) resulting in the evolution of these values. In order to illustrate this evolution Table 2.1 gives the original APM values from the agile manifesto (Larman, 2004) and the comparative values from Alleman (2005) as well as Conforto and Amaral (2008). It must be noted that the table simply states the values as stated by the authors and not necessarily in the way in which they are related.

It can be seen from this table that the APM values are being expanded depending on the various views of the author. However, it is interesting to note that this development has been largely beneficial for different industries to understand the reasoning behind agile in their own context (Owen et al, 2006). In any case the expanded values still reflect the original agile values and thus they can be taken as the refinement of the agile manifesto over the years. Although these changes may be beneficial to APM expansion and the industries concerned, the question that remains is to what extent these changes will go before they start deviating from the original ideas encompassed within the Agile Manifesto as practised in the IT industry.

Agile Project Management Principles

APM is based on the twelve principles that were formulated at the Agile Manifesto Declaration of 2001 given in Appendix 1. Just like the agile values above it must be noted that some of the principles given in the original declaration are more inclined towards software development. Consequently a number of authors give different principles depending on their point of focus. For example Fitsilis (2008) and Larman (2004) give only five principles i.e. embrace change, focus on customer value, deliver part of functionality incrementally, collaborate and, reflect and learn continuously. Whilst Alleman (2005) gives 10 principles which among other things include simplicity, embrace change, enabling the next effort (ensuring that the team is strengthened through learning), incremental change, maximising stakeholder value, rapid feedback, deliver and manage with purpose. It is interesting to note that although these principles might look different in a way, they are all similar because they emphasise one and the same thing drawn from the agile manifesto. However, it must also be noted that some things that are listed as principles by other authors are listed as practices by others. For instance Alleman (2005) lists travel light/light touch and manage with purpose/vision as principles whilst Augustine et al (2005) and Elliot (2008) take them as practices. Nevertheless the reflection from these principles suggest that APM is people oriented, customer focused, less bureaucratic, iterative development focused, delivery driven, and acknowledges change as well as collaboration (Larman, 2004; Hewson, 2006; Conforto and Amaral, 2008).