Chapter 11 Agile Project Management Tore Dyba ˚, Torgeir Dingsøyr, and Nils Brede Moe Abstract Agile software development represents a new approach for planning and managing software projects. It puts less emphasis on up-front plans and strict control and relies more on informal collaboration, coordination, and learning. This chapter provides a characterization and definition of agile project management based on extensive studies of industrial projects. It explains the circumstances behind the change from traditional management with its focus on direct supervision and standardization of work processes, to the newer, agile focus on self-managing teams, including its opportunities and benefits, but also its complexity and chal- lenges. The main contribution of the chapter is the four principles of agile project management: minimum critical specification, autonomous teams, redundancy, and feedback and learning. 11.1 Introduction A software project can be seen as a collection of activities that create an identifiable outcome of value. In its simplest form, project management consists of planning, executing, and monitoring these activities (see Chap. 1). However, the high costs and failure rates of software projects continue to engage researchers and practi- tioners, and despite several advances, the effective management of software pro- jects is still a critical challenge. This challenge has led to extensive interest in agile software development in the past decade (Dingsøyr et al. 2012). A number of methods have emerged that describe practices for development phases at the team, project, and organizational T. Dyba ˚(*) • T. Dingsøyr • N.B. Moe SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway e-mail: tore.dyba@sintef.no; torgeird@sintef.no; nilsm@sintef.no G. Ruhe and C. Wohlin (eds.), Software Project Management in a Changing World, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-55035-5_11, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 277