Agile project management is a term that may be unfamiliar to a lot of people. In essence, it’s a type of project planning wherein the project manager is not the one who dictates the tasks. While this approach does still require the presence of a project manager, his task is to manage a team of leaders who are the ones who dictate the tasks of their own sub-teams.

It may seem strange to have a project manager even though there are already several leaders in the project team, but the purpose of the project manager is to create a high level plan. This plan serves as an overview of sorts for the project, and it is from there that the project is broken down into bite-sized chunks of tasks.

These tasks will then be assigned to the leaders, who will then determine what each division needs to do in order to complete their set of tasks. This aspect of agile project management is what makes it different from other more traditional project planning methods. Each team’s leader has the authority and is expected to create their own plans, without the project manager dictating it to them, and find out what their team needs to acquire and to actually do.

Despite this appearance of autonomy, each individual team makes a significant impact on the project’s overall quality and delivery. If one team falls behind schedule, it could cause delays for the entire project.

The advantage of this agile project management setup is that the team leader of each division can make crucial decisions on their own, without having to go back-and-forth with the project manager to consult with them or get their permission to do things. For example, if his division’s supplies are running low and he needs to place a new order for them, he can just make the order himself rather than have to inform the project manager, ask for permission to make the order, and wait for the manager’s response before he makes that order. This ensures that work flows continuously without being disrupted by waiting for other people’s responses, which saves them a lot of time that is usually wasted in more traditional set-ups.

Another great aspect of agile project management is its highly flexible, interactive, and adaptable planning and monitoring process. Each division hast to report their progress in real time using a specified program or report format, which can then be viewed by the project manager and other team leaders so that they can get a feel of how the project is going. This very open information and reporting setup allows all the people involved in the project to easily adapt to changing situations in the project environment, and to react quickly if something goes awry.

And that’s what agile project management is, in a nutshell. While you may think that this will only work in large-scale projects that have a lot of people working on it, even small projects can benefit from this kind of management, so long as there are multiple teams or individuals are involved.

This article is merely a brief overview of agile management, simplified so as not to overwhelm those of you who know nothing about it. You can always go online to find out more about it, or read books to help enhance your understanding of this method. Who knows – maybe someday you’ll wind up spearheading a project in the future, and you might find that this method will save your company a lot of money, time, and other resources, and also foster a sense of responsibility and camaraderie between your team members.