Impact of agile practices on managing professional Development training projects

Abstract

Project management success has been an elusive question which could never be appropriately answered due to the continuous improvement in existing knowledge base and introduction of disruptive technologies like Agile, AI, Bitcoin and Block chain etc. Agile Practices had been adopted, for last two decades, in software development ad IT industry with great success and has been observed to have been making its way in other industries like engineering, education and many more. The acceptability of agile in multiple industries is gradually gaining pace amidst resistance to change and maintaining status quo. This study was carried out to observe impact of agile practices in managing professional training project success. From Agile Manifesto, four predictor variables (responsiveness, flexibility, competence, and speed) were chosen to see their impact on project success, namely on time, within budget, according to requirements (scope), and customer satisfaction. For this study, a questionnaire on five-point Likert scale is collected in twin cities Islamabad/Rawalpindi in third quarter of year 2018. The instrument was developed and factory analysis, reliability, validity test confirmed the constructs measure. The sample is selected with purpose sampling. The data was analyzed with optimal scale CATREG SPSS, Spearman correlation which is the most compatible method with scale of measurement chosen in this study for regression analysis. To bridge the gap due to deficiencies in traditional project management, like heavy training conduct process, inadequacy in change request process, and customer acceptance process of final deliverable, use of agile practices being iterative in nature, will provide continuous feedback from customer and collaborative environment. The research resulted in establishing all predictors to be statistically significant and responsiveness was found to have the optimum impact on project success, though flexibility and competence also show positive and significant impact. The association between the predictors and response variable were also found to be positive and significant, strongest being responsiveness and least significant being speed. It was found that in training projects, where teaching and learning is involved, content and pedagogy must be agile. Variable ‘responsiveness’ had shown that the highest priority iv for training projects was deduced to be customer involvement in planning and decision making in a collaborative environment where trainer adopts interactive approach. Variable ‘flexibility’ was authenticated by customer involvement on training design, modification, iterative assessment, and collaborative teamwork. Variable ‘competence’ was represented by well-defined and relevant training objectives, demonstrable skill enhancement and customer satisfaction. Consideration and updates on change requests, and end of the training assessment/evaluation represented variable ‘speed’. Keeping in view the results of this study, future studies may focus on teaching and learning process at larger scale in higher education, vocational education and professional education. Keywords: Agile practices, Agile Manifesto, flexibility, speed, responsiveness, competence, project, success project.