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Carl Erickson generated more than a little interest in his talk on "Agile Project Management in Extreme Programming Projects."
May 25, 2004
Grand Rapids, MI – PMI (Project Management Institute of West Michigan) held their Professional Development Day at the Prince Center in Calvin College on Monday, May 24. With a theme of “The Wave of the Future,” it seemed a necessity to include a topic that discussed project management and Extreme Programming (XP). And who better to fit that bill than Carl Erickson, President of Atomic Object, where they’ve been practicing XP exclusively for almost four years.
It was a tough act though, since many in the audience were not familiar with XP practices and needed to understand them to grasp the “agile” project manager (PM) role, while some were familiar with XP and wanted to know how the PM role fit with XP. In a style sure to please the critics, Erickson enveloped his presentation by outlining the role of an agile project manager and he then inserted several XP practices inside that envelope.
Erickson identified four key roles of the agile PM that is working on an XP project: managing the XP process, customer interaction facilitation (where a customer is whomever the work is being done for), measuring and tracking, and any processes above the project level.
There were good questions and inquisitive interest about many of the XP practice descriptions that followed, including pair programming, small releases, and the planning game. “In the planning game, the hardest problems are not technical, but rather involve people – at least proportional to team size,” remarked Erickson. “A lot of behavior is driven by fear.” Here, the PM plays a key role in understanding and managing both customer and team fears, especially if they are new to XP. Once they are into the process and have undergone a few iterations, these fears become less and less. The PM can then focus more on consistent measuring and tracking in parallel with the planning and estimating involved in each successive iteration.
“From such a traditional process-oriented group, I think you stirred up a lot of interest,” remarked one of the attendees. “We’re awed and intrigued at the same time.”
About Atomic Object LLC
Atomic Object designs, develops, and delivers custom software solutions. We form partnerships with the business experts of our clients, contributing our knowledge of modern computing technologies and our reliable software development process. Based on agile practices in general, and Extreme Programming in specific, the Atomic Object development process delivers tested, reliable, maintainable software, predictably on time and budget, while significantly reducing project risk. With experience in a wide range of domains and industries—including e-commerce and web apps, business process automation, database integration, kiosks, and manufacturing software—Atomic Object specializes in having a world-class software development process, rather than being specialists in a particular business niche.
###Atomic Object Contact:
Carl Erickson
+1 616 776 6020
CarlErickson@atomicobject.com