For this past year, I have been asked from several students/lecturers to be their Final Year Project (FYP) advisor for their Diploma Vokasional Malaysia (DVM). They have the necessary skills to develop a sophisticated system but lacks in project management.
I am not a “professional” but let’s dig into this topic.
What is Agile?
Agile is a modern approach to project management and software developmeny that emphasize flexibility, collaboration and customer focused delivery. Instead of following fixed plan from start to finish like traditional Waterfall Model, Agile breaks project into smaller, manageable chunks called iterations or sprints.
Let’s quickly review this;
1. Planning
“What you want to build?” In this early stage you need to think for the ideas (or called as backlog) of what you plan to build and develop. List all the future features and decide which ones to work on first. Planning is flexible.
2. Designs
Come up with a simple design or layout. Remember, you can always utilize the strategy of Sketch > Wireframe > Mockup > Prototype . With this you may understand how the end product will be like (expected to be).
3. Development
Remember all the ideas (backlog)? Now its time for action. Starts writing your code! Focus with the task planned. Put a goals and estimation for the sub-module to be completed.
4. Testing
After coding, check if everything is works properly. Look for any bug and potential errors. Don’t wait until the very end to test your completed module. Testing in early phase can save your time.
5. Deployment
Once testing is done, try to deploy it. Invite anyone (your batchmate, classmate or even the faculty janitors) to be the testers. Differents user can trigger differents behavior.
6. Review
Look at what you have built. Collect reviews, suggestion and feedbacks. This might help to enhance your project.
7. Launch
After enough reviews and improvements, go and launch your project with proud! Keeps improving based on real-live situations.
Well, I do encourage FYP’s student to really plan and manage your project accordingly. Once a wise person told me , “If you fail to plan, you are planned to fail”.
I do hope my dearest connection especially final year students in Computer Science or relevant course understand the necessity of project management.
Image source thanks to: InterQuality
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