Agile project management
for Media and Publishing industry

Vladimir Erofeev, Sergey Rymsha, Nikolay Shevelev

1. Media and Publishing industry works with people. There are no strict methodologies that prognoses direction of the industry. (The only one is a method iterative approximation.) So, Publishing industry is always changing.
   • Vague Requirements. The requirements are usually only ‘business requirements’, they do not specify each and every detail and they are never technical ones.
   • Short Time To Market. It is always important for companies in Publishing industry to be the first, to show working solution to the end users partners and as soon as possible. It is important to optimize the implementation time with other activities such as requirements analysis, design, validation and even support.
   • Incomplete Requirements. Not all requirements are formulated at the beginning. It is difficult for Media companies to formulate all the requirements at once but it is important for than to move forward right now. Same as with ‘Short Time To Market’ issue, this makes the media companies to manage the development process together with analytics work.
   • Floating Budget. The budget for project is floating due to the nature of media industry – funds can end at any unexpected time, and then all that was already invested would become 100% waste of money, because overall system doesn’t work and hence doesn’t generate value.
   • Quality Assurance. Waterfall method provides a long preparation phase, requirements analysis, a complete documentation, and other procedures related to testing to provide a quality for real-time systems, arm equipment, space technologies… where the price of single error iv very high. Media companies require quality of ‘first order’. Simplifying: Military requires to test 99,999% cases, Media needs to ensure not more than 99,9%.
2. How agile can help companies in Media and Publishing industry.
   • Frequent deliveries help with Short Time To Market, Incomplete Requirements, Quality Assurance and Floating Budget issues
   • We are always with the customer, always in contact with him. It covers Vague Requirements and Incomplete Requirements issues
   • Continuous and automated testing helps with Floating Budget issue
   • Development and support do not differ in the management. Actually phases look the same. Helps with Short Time To Market issue

Vladimir Erofeev

Bio

Vladimir Erofeev – IT projects manager in Exigen Services (Saint-Petersburg office). During his 15 years practice in IT he took part in about 10 various projects in very different fields: aviation, military security systems, telecommunications, banking, mass-media. Vladimir worked and had success as Software Developer, Business and System Analyst, Coacher, Project Manager. He is a Certified Scrum Master graduated by Jeff Sutherland – the co-founder of Scrum methodology.

Sergey Rymsha

Bio

Sergey Rymsha – project manager in Exigen Services company in Russia.

Sergey joined Exigen Services in 2006. Now he is an IT manager of projects for one of the leading Search and Media Company. He is also a certified Scrum Muster http://www.scrumalliance.org/profiles/34924-sergey-rymsha