Ep. 27: Fatema El-Wakeel - Agile Project Management

Contact Fatema:LinkedIn -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fatemaelwakeelmbacma/


Fatema's Blog: https://strategicalanalytics.com/


Fatema's Articles:



https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/may-2019-agile-project-management-in-analytics/


https://sfmagazine.com/post-entry/august-2019-further-demystification-of-agile-project-management/




FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT


Adam: (00:00)


Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam
Larson. And this week's episode, Mitch was joined by Fatema
El-Zahraa El-Wakeel to talk about agile project management
methodology. Fatema helps us understand agile by breaking down
the process and giving us a simple how to, when looking to start
using this project management methodology. Let's listen to learn
more. 


 


Fatema: (00:30)


So traditional project management model is really what we're used
to seeing for several years. It consists of a project manager and
a team of specialists who work on a project. The project team
begins by meeting with the customer, can be another department or
another company and external party depending on the project. And
then once they collect the project requirements, they break it
down into milestones. And then the project manager is tasked with
keeping the customer posted on the status and completing the
project. This model is really vulnerable to a lot of things like
delays, miscalculations or unforeseen costs, which can be caused
by the budget overruns or an overall failure to deliver a stated
goals. 


 


Mitch: (01:25)


How is the agile project management different than the waterfall
method in terms of, you know, the variables that come along with
the project and which methodology is better for analytics. 


 


Fatema: (01:39)


So when you look at any project, really there are three main
variables. The time set for the project, the resources that the
project will be using, and the main thing is the scope. Oh, and
in a traditional project management, the scope is fixed and
obviously you can increase the resources by increasing the budget
signing off an additional budget or adding additional employees
to the project, the time needed is an estimate. People like to
fix it. But normally, unfortunately you see overrun. In agile
project management, the resources and time components are more
fixed. While the scope is estimated. So you know that kind of the
direction where you're going but it is not set on set in stone
somehow. In agile because, because we are really responding to
like the business needs. So we re we prefer using it in analytics
project rather than sticking to a scope that is fixed. So
normally what happens is a product owner, the product owner and
the customer would agree on a, an MVP, which is the minimum
viable product. I'm using this method. The time spent for the
MVPs for each iteration is called a sprint. And at the beginning
of the sprint normally the customer and the project team, agree
on the sprint goals and the MVPs that are expected. And then they
kind of establish a plan really to complete the work. And at the
end of the sprint, the project team goes back to the customer to
show the MVP and get the feedback. So they show the customer a
demo of what they've done so far. Sometimes even you can go live
with part of the project and launch it. And I think this is the
benefit of using agile methodology in data analytics because
you're utilizing the data. 


 


Mitch: (03:41)


Now I know there are a lot of terms that I'm sure our listeners
hear frequently, but may not necessarily know what they mean. So
within the agile project management methodology, what are some of
the most important facets and some of the terms that you should
really understand to understand agile project management? 


 


Fatema: (04:01)


That's a great question, Mitch really, because I think when you
start using agile project management it's a bit overwhelming.
Like when I first started i was like what are all those
terminologies that people use? And what does that mean? I think
few of them, well one of it is, for example the scrum and I'm a
scrum is or no, those are normally regular meetings to reviews
the progress of the adult project, similar to a project
management manager. Oh the scrum master oversees the development
process and ensures everyone is on track and it's really aligned
to the planned sprints. Another term used is scrum of scrums and
that happens when you have several projects, multiple teams
working on different projects and they need to keep the wider
team updated. Product backlog is another, term that is widely
used and you can see as like list of tasks to be completed by the
team, open items that the team needs to go through and kind of
close in each sprint. Normally the product, owner and manages the
backlog to ensure the product delivery. So he or she discusses
with the, which items on the backlog need to be done. There's
different like labeling, like if it's a should or could. How
important is the item on the backlog. 


 


Mitch: (05:35)


Now that we have a better understanding of the terminology that
goes into agile project management, what is a practical example?
Can you give us a case study or something that you've worked on
where all of this kind of comes together?


 


Fatema: (05:50)


So let me think of an example. So, let's say a customer described
some challenges with current reporting used for pricing and they
explained that they would like, that's a visualization to
understand relevant issues. So it's basically a visualization and
analytics project. So I'm the agreed MVP in this case or the
minimum viable project would be a dashboard that helps report
pricing. The team working on the project agrees with the customer
to me by weekly for example, and review the progress and MVPs
based on expected sprint deliverables at the start. As you can
see from here, the project time is agreed and it might be three
months and the number of team members is, for example, set to
five. So the main, the three main, um, facets, it's really of the
radar project management is you have a scope, you know, the
direction where you are, and in this case you're going towards a
visualization project. You have the time set, which is three
months, and you have the resources set, which in this case the
team members, the five team members, Oh, the product owner in
this case create some backlog listing the tasks needed such as
tools used for the visualization, preliminary KPIs and other
reporting requirements. The scrum meetings normally would occur
daily and the scrum master would ensure everything is on track. A
scrum meeting is normally like 10 minutes and it's a stand up. So
everyone in the team would just say what they've done this day
before what they're doing today. And like if there are any
blockers so that in this case the scrum master would unblock
those challenges that the team is facing. If you assume that at
the end of sprint one the team meets with the customer to present
and discuss the print preliminary KPI and the basic dashboards.
So it's still the start of the project and the ...