Why Agile Is Great for Your Business

Agile project management is a great alternative to traditional methods, to address the customer’s needs and the delivery of business value from the beginning of the project. This blog describes the main benefits of Agile for both the customer and the business.

Superior Product Quality

Quality is an important consideration in Agile development since it has a direct influence on customer satisfaction. Testing is an important part of quality. Agile testing is integrated into the development cycle to guarantee that the product fulfills customer expectations and allows for any necessary revisions.

Here are a few more examples that demonstrate how we can promote quality in the Agile environment:

• Agile development is built on a Definition of Done (DoD), which assures that each delivery fulfills a certain quality level.
• By including continuous integration and daily testing into the development process, the development team is able to resolve concerns more quickly.
• Agile development encourages the use of automated frameworks like CI/CD.

Increased Project Control

Organizations may take advantage of complete team and project transparency thanks to agile frameworks like Scrum. Scrum meetings provide the company a chance to get feedback on the caliber of the job completed. Burn-down charts and product backlogs are two examples of Scrum artifacts that clearly show what has been delivered and what still needs to be done. The use of more pertinent and precise metrics to forecast time and cost, assess project performance, and gauge the caliber of each delivery is another part of project control.

Effective Risk Reduction

Agile frameworks deliver rapid releases starting from the very first sprint, so there is less chance of complete project failure. Rapid releases ensure a short time frame between the initial project investment and knowing if the product works.

Improved Client Satisfaction

Development is very transparent, open to change, and responsive to consumer input. It enables:

• Product releases that are incremental at the conclusion of each sprint.
• Early client access to the product while it is being developed.
• Quick exchange of consumer input on the program to enable necessary improvements to be made as soon as possible.

Stakeholders Will Work Together and Take More Responsibility

In an Agile project we can expect to see increased collaboration and ownership among key stakeholders (development teams, project managers, senior management, etc.). Using this approach increases visibility and reduces assumptions made due to missing information or ambiguous requirements.

Self-organization boosts team morale

Agile projects are built on self-organized teams in which each team member contributes equally. Being a part of such a work atmosphere gives employees the confidence to be creative, imaginative, and willing to share their expertise. Furthermore, cross-functional teams enable team members to continue learning new skills, techniques, and technologies that will benefit their personal growth.

Agility

In conventional development projects, we prepare a massive specification up front and then convince business owners how expensive it is to alter anything, especially as the project progresses. In order to avoid scope creep and a never-ending project, we fight modifications and put individuals through a change control committee to keep them to a bare minimum. Agile development philosophies differ. Change is tolerated in agile development.

In fact, it’s to be anticipated. Because one thing is guaranteed in life: change. Instead, the timetable is set, and needs emerge and grow as the product is created. Of course, for this to succeed, an actively involved stakeholder who comprehends the idea and performs the appropriate trade-off judgements, exchanging existing scope for new, is required.

Reduces Technical Debt

The maintenance efforts necessary to sustain the present product are referred to as technical debt. Among these are defect management, reworking, and validation. This technical debt can quickly mount in a typical project methodology as the team concentrates on new feature development to stay up with the project timetable.

Agile software development aids in reducing technical debt. Any problems, feature modifications, or other maintenance work are recorded in a product backlog. During each sprint planning session, the team analyses the backlog to identify what to tackle next. As a result, each sprint represents a new opportunity to correct bugs while also developing new features.

Deliverables that are Predictable

By using specific time boxes for the development cycles and their respective activities, the team can deliver incremental releases quickly and frequently, increasing business value and ROI. Time boxing in Agile development also allows the business to predict the costs and timelines of each sprint by maintaining team allocation and sprint length throughout the project.

Superior visibility

Agile development concepts promote a very collegial collaborative approach and active “user” engagement throughout the product development process. This gives important stakeholders exceptional insight into the status of the project and the desired outcome, which in return assists in ensuring that expectations are appropriately handled. Agile development’s clear visibility makes it possible for any required decisions to be made as soon as possible, while there is still time to make a meaningful difference in the outcome.

David Tzemach

The founder and owner of the Agile Quality Made Easy blog (25K followers). A platform that he uses for teaching and coaching others, sharing knowledge with people, and guiding them towards success while giving them the inspiration and tools to discover their own path.

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