Introduction

The case study is about the Primavera Systems which offers the enterprise project portfolio management solutions. The management solution provides help to customers to manage their programs, resources, and projects. The organization is making plans to adopt the agile software development approach to offer more efficient teamwork. The case will research the scenario under which Primavera is using the agile business development approach since 2004 and highlighting the critical success factors and best practices implemented by the organization using the agile management approach to ensure the organizational development. The paper will include the identification of problems in the development of Primavera prior to the adoption of agile strategies. The justification will be provided to ensure the effectiveness of adopting agile techniques in Primavera. The effectiveness of strategies and steps followed by Primavera in adopting agile methodology will also be discussed. The major challenges facing by Primavera in adopting agile framework will also be discussed. The way in which Primavera used to mitigate these challenges will also be assessed. The valid reasons will be provided to ensure that the agile methodology is more effective as compared to traditional methodologies to produce better business values. Primavera business development since the adoption of an agile framework in 2004 and its impact on project management and economic growth will be discussed at the end.

Problems with Primavera’s Development Organization Prior to its Adoption of Agile Strategies

Primavera was facing various issues in managing the organizational tasks prior to its adoption of agile strategies. Primavera was typically using the command-and-control philosophy which people who were not the part of the development team and were far from actual work used to make the major decisions. The developers were not considered the part of the decision-making process. This was becoming the cause of deteriorating expectations of the people and a broad gap between the development team members and senior management. The organization was traditionally using the waterfall development approach in which team required to get involved in the harder tasks to provide quality work (Vijayasarathy & Turk, 2008).  For example, the team had to work at weekends and late night to finish the project tasks on time. The teams of the Primavera needed to change their deep-rooted dependency and departmentally based functional silos under the typical system of organizational hierarchy.

The leadership change was taken place in Primavera in 2001 has brought many of these problems in deep concentration with a view to resolve these issues in the future. Under the new leadership, the team realized the need for the synchronize the vision and values and drive initiatives accordingly. The need arises to set a world-class development team which can focus on the needs of the customers. Primavera business environment is also facing the problems related to the lack of creativity, business growth, and learning process. Team building activities were required to work better across the functional teams along with shared value perspective. the culture at Primavera was required to be changed because it was becoming problematic for the team. The team was working in an exhausted way, working seven days a week, 8 hours a day and deliver software to the customers which were not very appreciable. The people were leading the path which was not strategically appropriate (Korhonen, 2009). The followers were also following the same path but the change was required to ensure the development in better perspective. lack of product features, instability, the high number of quality issues, disappointment and frustration in the development team, shifting market needs and ineffective development processes at Primavera were the major issues that led the organization toward changed approach.

Justification

Primavera should consider the agile techniques to solve its problems because agile techniques provide an effective way to resolve the current issues. An agile technique is an effective approach to get implemented in the software industry to respond to unpredictable situations faced by the business. agile methodologies provide the opportunities for the direction the team efforts to create effective process results throughout the project life cycle. The agile technique is more effective to maintain the regular tempo of the project and create desire potential for project achievements. Agile techniques are effective to recurrence of condensing the work cycle and yield the outcomes though functional product (Chow & Cao, 2008). Comparatively, the traditional waterfall technique only helps the development team in setting the project aspects appropriate but agile technique to ensure the development of each and every feature of project ranging from requirements, design, check and balance throughout the project life cycle. The agile technique is effective to reevaluate the project done. So, if the team get out of track after some time, suppose after one or two weeks or at any other regular interval, a reevaluation will help to identify the issues and get the team back on track. The “inspect-and-adapt” technique of agile framework reduces the cost of wasting time and development efforts and keep the project set. s

Effectiveness of Primavera’s Strategies and Steps on Adopting Agile Methodologies

Primavera had adopted various strategies and step based on agile methodologies. These steps and strategies include the use objective coaching, focus on teamwork, teamwork and team, use established agile language, use executive support, learn to set expectations and negotiate, don’t work overtime, watch for trouble and expect hard work. Firstly, using objective coaching include the objective feedback to learn new techniques and create an effective learning culture can make a big difference. Secondly, focus on teamwork, delegate the team and shift their focus on team dynamics helped the organization to do well to meet the requirements. Use of the established agile language can help the people of Primavera to think in a new way and can foster the creativity. The third strategy of getting executive support along with bottom-up fashion will ensure that the things are going right and lets the learning take hold. The most effective strategy of Primavera under agile technique is not to work over time. Primavera firmly worked to deal with the overtime working addiction of team. The approach was effective to push high-quality work without working overtime. Learn to negotiate and set expectations was an exceptional strategy of Primavera where the team gathers feedback after each iteration. Team negotiation is critical to learn the work from one another and develop the best. Another effective strategy of Primavera agile approach was to watch for trouble. Primavera management was eager for positive reinforcement and encouraging the team to try new things to promote people learning mode. One of an exceptional strategy under agile technique is to expect the hard work. under the agile framework, each of the team members was expected to learn and bring continuous improvement and best experience.

Major Challenges faced by Primavera

Primavera was facing various challenges in its first attempt of adopting the agile approach. Under the agile project management technique, Primavera has adopted Scrum but its first release has shown certain problems. In the start, the team became too eager during sprint review without fully testing them. it caused ending high priority bugs. To mitigate this obstacle, the team was made dedicated to ensuring full sprint to stabilize the product and fix the bugs.

Another challenge was encountered when the approach gets focused on short-term deliverables but lost sight on long-term maintainability. But the extensile and stable architecture of the organization helped to mitigate this risk and ensure long-term stability of the system.

The third challenge was lack of stakeholders’ clarity about the project completion date. Although, the stakeholders can clearly assess the sprint-to-sprint progress but couldn’t tell how much work remained. Stakeholders were in good position to collect data from teams and made feedback during sprint review (Moe, Dingsøyr & Dybå, 2009).  Some feedbacks were valuable but others were challenging. The stakeholder related challenges can be mitigated through treating new suggestions in feedback as new requirements of the project and address these items and should be more disciplined in providing feedback.

Fundamental Reasons why the Agile Methodology is Better and Bigger Business Values than Traditional Project Management Methodologies

The agile methodology produced better and bugger business values in Primavera as compared to traditional methodologies of project management because instead of passing down the decisions throughout different layers of management as performed in traditional waterfall methodology, agile approach ensured owners and developers worked closely and also kept the stakeholders closer as they can saw the monthly sprint reviews. It enhanced the ability of the team and other stakeholders and ensure to meet the changing needs of stakeholders (Mahnic, 2011). The stakeholder’s feedback was also closely utilized to create additional improvement. Hence ensures the great business value.

An Overview of Primavera’s Business Development Since the Publication of this Case Study in 2004

Since the publication of case in 2004 and the adoption of agile techniques, an enormous growth can be seen in Primavera business development. It allowed improved software quality. After the releasing of the first agile developed product, the increase in quality measured to 30%. It also ensured faster time to market by offering the highest value items and adjust to market conditions. Great contribution of development team, understanding stakeholder’s requirements and their great collaboration has enabled the organization to accomplish the tasks in a timely manner and match to market conditions well in order to ensure business and economic growth (Korhonen, 2013).

Conclusion

Primavera enabled to a secured great range of benefits by adopting the agile project management approach. The agile approach is comparatively better than the traditional waterfall approach and ensured better team building framework to satisfy the customer’s demand.

References

Chow, T., & Cao, D. B. (2008). A survey study of critical success factors in agile software projects. Journal of systems and software, 81(6), 961-971.

Korhonen, K. (2013). Evaluating the impact of an agile transformation: a longitudinal case study in a distributed context. Software Quality Journal, 21(4), 599-624.

Korhonen, K. (2009, May). Migrating defect management from waterfall to agile software development in a large-scale multi-site organization: A case study. In International Conference on Agile Processes and Extreme Programming in Software Engineering (pp. 73-82). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Moe, N. B., Dingsøyr, T., &Dybå, T. (2009). Overcoming barriers to self-management in software teams. IEEE software, 26(6).

Mahnic, V. (2011). A case study on agile estimating and planning using scrum. ElektronikairElektrotechnika, 111(5), 123-128.

Vijayasarathy, L. E. O. R., & Turk, D. (2008). Agile software development: A survey of early adopters. Journal of Information Technology Management, 19(2), 1-8.