IT support for agile project management

This paper argues that software development has always been a complex and uncertain process, regardless of the type of system being developed, and the reason software systems have failed is largely due to failure to map die information system to the organizational culture and business model. This failure was often due to the fact that the methodologies used were monolithic and mechanistic, based on other engineering disciplines, such as those suited to make to stock production, rather than software development. Software development has always required an agile development and management approach, which caters for the complexity and uncertainty common in a software development environment. Developers in the past were often utilizing methodologies for methodology's sake, rather than looking to the context in which the software was being developed. The IT tools that support software project management have also followed the traditional planning and control approach to project management, focusing on automating a small part of the project planning and scheduling activities by means of GANTT and PERT, CPM. This paper argues for a software project management process that is agile. Agile project management can be seen as a process of collaborative decision making, of assembling data and information and making decisions in a constantly changing environment. Therefore the IT support needs to be in the form of a collaborative decision support system. The paper discusses some components for the decision support system, which can be available to all user groups in a collaborative mariner throughout die entire project lifecycle.