I am interested to work in an organization that purely deals in the design and development of software and organizational systems. The organization I am interested in has been in existence over while. It is known as Ushahidi. It was found by Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich, Ory Okolloh and David Kobia. It started as an open community hub where people passionate about technology met and discussed various technologies. Out of the meetings, a coding community was created and today were are among the globally recognized technology creation firms in the nation. It has worked on technologies that are now being used in the solving of social issues in Africa and other parts of the world. In the context of this organization and understanding of agile project management practices, I believe that the organization has been using and benefitting from this new approach. This paper presents my reflection on the software design and development processes indicating the general application of agile and how this impacts on the performance of the organization.
Agile involves all about working in a flexible and productive environment. The process involves value creation at all stages of project development. Notably, the best way to ensure this is by enabling the staff to work under conditions of complete freedom and flexibility. In a nutshell, this has been the working environment in the organization with which I work. The employees including the management get to the organization at their will and in the office, no one has a designated working station like in many other organizations that are highly structured (Highsmith 34). The implications of such a flexible and free environment are that the organization's employees are highly motivated, and this reflects on every product that the organization works on. Notably, one of the things that make the agile model and approach a success is the fact that the organization started as a community hub before moving on to becoming a company. In the community hub environment, the community would interact with the business-oriented community and the users of various technology and in the end, there was a highly heterogeneous community. The business person comes up with the idea, the coder comes up with the product that is user-guided.
One of the major elements or software design and development that the organization emphasizes on is user experience (UX). Consequently, the organization found it important to retain the community hub environment. Through this, the iterative project management lifecycle involves all the stakeholders for whom the product is meant including the business persons, the coders, and the users. In line with the agile project management approaches, the iterative PMLC model applies through the prototyping stages and the adaptive software development models (Schwaber 55). The community hub environment allows for the success of this approach in that it brings together all the parties interested in any application system or other software product. In particular, this system makes it easy for the organization to successfully create software considering the fact that the time it takes to complete a project is shorter in this setting that in an environment where the different stakeholders important in the software development process are located in different places. Notably, the stages of speculation, collaboration, and learning apply in every stage of the self-correcting system. At the speculation stage, the person interested in the creation of a software solution is taken through the technological and business sense of the project as well as the user needs and user experience requirements of the project. The implications of such a system are that the organization can successfully diagnose any arising issues in advance. The self-correcting delivery system, customer collaboration, and taking the knowledge learned from the process steers the team towards the desired ends of the project. One of the most important elements offered by the agile system are the numerous feedback paths at each phase of development and which are enabled by the comfortable environment, the location of the stakeholders in the same environment, and the communication systems.
One of the most important success factors for the organization is the emphasis on the user experience. The organization recognizes that success will never be measured by the size of the check received from the client. Rather, our success is measured by the ease of use of our systems which is why at every stage of development the users are involved. The client-focused development approaches are usually difficult in highly hierarchical business environment considering the fact that the demands of those in senior positions may not necessarily reflect the user experience needs (Chin 18). However, the focus as provided under the adaptive project framework ensures that at every stage the client remains one of the major focuses of the project. Notably, it is for this reason that the firm has so far been able to produce technologies that hugely impact on communities across the world and more so in several African and Asian countries. The Ushahidi software adopts adaptive management framework (APF) and does not rely on traditional project management. In ADPF, it is recognized that project management can be affected by outside forces (Hass). The Ushahidi project has to be redesigned as the nature of disasters it handles changes.
In conclusion, this paper presents a reflection on the application of agile project management approaches in an organization that I would prefer to work in. Notably, the firm has been successful in the use of agile which was hugely supported by the fact that the company began as a simple tech community hub. Notably, the process may not be directly referred as agile, but the observation and analysis of the same prove the application of agile in the organization.
Works Cited
Chin, Gary. Agile Project Management. New York: AMACOM, 2004. Print.
Hass, Kathleen. The Blending of Traditional and Agile Project Management, 2016. Web. Accessed 2nd July 2016<https://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/comp3120/local_docs/readings/the-blending-of-traditional-and-agile-project-management.pdf>
Highsmith, Jim. Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, Second Edition. New York: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2009. Print.
Schwaber, Ken. Agile Project Management With Scrum. Redmond, Wash.: Microsoft Press, 2004. Print.
