APM3: A Methodology Metamodel for Agile Project Management

The advent of agile methodologies, though contributing much to software development processes, had a more profound impact on project management processes. Through supporting adaptability in their process frameworks, agile methodologies deviated from conventional project management approaches. This novel attitude has resulted in the emergence of an agile framework for project management. The Agile Project Management Framework (APMF) consists of fine-grained project management practices applied in agile methodologies, and is fast emerging as an alternative to the conventional project management framework. However, there are deficiencies in both frameworks that prevent developers from enhancing each framework to embrace the other. A logical solution is to merge the two frameworks into a Unified Project Management Framework (UPMF). With this objective in mind, we propose a project-management methodology metamodel as the common abstract substrate to fuse the standard framework with its agile counterpart. The proposed Agile Project Management Methodology Metamodel (APM(3)) has been developed through applying abstraction to the fine-grained constituents of APMF. Based on the generic agile metamodel of APM(3), an analytical review of the project management processes of seven prominent agile methodologies has been conducted.