Agile project management is a modern project management methodology that boosts your project’s efficiency and success rate.
It does this by:
Traditional ways of working are very step by step. You start at point A, and continue on B, C, D. There is little room for adaptions, changes, or readjusting which can lead to problems down the line - this occurs because traditional methods often look too far into the future without drilling down to all of the smaller steps that need to happen to get there.
There are 12 key principles guiding Agile project management, but particularly relevant ones are:
How can we implement Agile methodologies within your Commercial Property workflow?
They say there's no such thing as too much planning! And that definitely rings true for an Agile environment. Industrious has adapted the use of Asana to plan, map out, and track all of our areas of the business. By seperating our portfolio, projects, internal processes, and administration into various projects and 'boards' - we have the ability to create extensive tasks, sub-tasks, and extensive timelines.
Using a core 'one place of truth' for all of our works, we eliminate the hassle of having to search for details or documents, and we can clearly maintain and stick to our projected timelines for our work and projects.
Agile process mapping, most commonly known as value stream mapping, is a Lean management process that allows you to visualize a development cycle from beginning to end. It helps you display all stages of your work process and your team's assignments.
With the end goal being to continuously provide value to your client or tenants, through value stream mapping, you can see both the value-adding activities in your work process and those that generate waste.
By implementing regular meetings called 'stand ups' - which are proposed to happen daily, but can be readjusted to as often as you personally need - you give your team the transparancy to share what they're working on, how things are progressing, and bring up any roadblocks that they need help with.
This process leaves no room for things to get left behind or overlooked, and creates a better sense of team achievement. Additonally to the stand ups, by implementing a 'blocking' format of working i.e in 'sprints' (monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly etc) you are giving your team a crystal clear expectation of deadlines to be met and an overall project or work timeline.
It also allows teams to constantly assess and re-assess client expectations and needs in order to improve the outcome rather than working to produce something all at once. A team’s focus will be on the highest priority tasks and sub-projects, which will change and adapt according to client/stakeholder needs/expectations.
The team is at the center and each member of the team will be working towards completing tasks which they are responsible for in each time period. Each team member's goal and focus is to show the progress of tasks throughout a sprint, working towards getting their assigned tasks done.
The primary benefit of working with agile methodologies is the flexibility it gives you to adjust your workflow as you go. With traditional methods such as Waterfall, each task preceeds another step and they have to be completed one by one. With Agile, you Respond to change over following a plan.
We all know that the scope of projects and the expectations of clients and tenants are continually changing as their own priorities move. Agile practices is all about continuous improvement.
Thus, after every project or plan is complete, the team should sit down and evaluate how they went and if they're happy with what they achieved. Not to be mixed up with the actual end result of the project, you should be discussing the process and how it could be improved. It allows the team to sit down and talk about what has been working and what should be changed. As such it is a great source of information for the manager and a place where new better processes are born.
There are so many more elements of Agile that can benefit Commercial Property management companies - the options are limitless! We highly encourage you to look into how it can work for you.
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