10 Reasons why you should use an Agile methodology
Why adopt an agile approach? Why not? After all, a PwC report from the last few years found that 71% of organizations have used some form of agile methodology. What’s more, according to PMI, projects managed using an agile mindset and principles are 28% more successful. These and other statistics point to more effective and efficient working as a key result of being agile. Instead of focusing on a particular methodology, such as scrum or Kanban, this article takes a wider perspective, listing the fundamental benefits of agile, regardless of which framework you use.
Table of contents
What is Agile?
The concept of Agile began early this century, with the Agile Manifesto, a joint statement from representatives of various alternative thinking in software development. The Manifesto is basically the Agile mission statement, beginning:
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it, and going on to outline an emphasis on human interaction and collaboration that responds rapidly to changing circumstances to product working (quality) software.
The Manifesto goes on to iterate 12 core principles of Agile. For more on the Agile Manifesto, read our article “Everything You Should Know About the Agile Manifesto”.
For sure, agile methodologies have largely become the industry standard for software and digital product development, leaving behind the traditional – and more rigid – waterfall approach to managing this type of project.
Check out the TOP 10 benefits of Agile methodology.
Advantage of Agile #1 – Focus on end-users
Agile systems and processes are focused on delivering value to the end-user of the product. That means a strong interest in their needs and wishes, putting users at the center of project planning. This is done by means of engaging with users’ needs, including developing user stories that clearly identify key types of user, what they want and what value the product should deliver to them. These stories are then mapped or laid out to show the users’ various journeys when using the planned product to various degrees of detail. This mapping process results in clear priorities for development which determines which aspects and features are worked on in each sprint or iteration.
Product (or feature) testing is deployed at key stages of the process, ensuring timely user feedback is an essential part of the development.
Advantage of Agile #2 – Predictable and often quicker delivery
Prioritizing tasks and development work according to user needs often means you have a releasable version of the product earlier than you would with a waterfall approach. Additionally, the focus on specific features and ‘pieces’ of the product make for more efficient working thanks to a tighter focus on smaller, more manageable objectives in each short sprint of activity. In other words, Agile often means a faster time-to-market for your digital product.
In some Agile frameworks like scrum, the development team delivers a working piece of the digital product each sprint, which means every week, two weeks or month.
These first two reasons to use Agile are encapsulated in the first principle in the Agile Manifesto:
- Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Advantage of Agile #3 – A better quality product
As previouslymentioned, testing is a big part of the Agile approach and is usually carried out after each feature (or feature set) is developed. Such testing may be with user representatives (does it solve their problem or make their lives easier?), the client or product owner (does it fulfill the identified business needs and objectives?), or other stakeholders (such as investors). Then there’s the testing conducted internally, ensuring the product’s code quality and functioning. Regular checking in with reality ensures a quality product that clearly addresses its target needs. This is an advantage of Agile Methodology.
Product quality is one of the reasons most Boldare development teams include a quality assurance specialist and/or business analyst.
Advantage of Agile #4 – More effective teamwork
When thinking about the advantages of Agile, it’s impossible not to mention efficiency. Agile teams are self-organizing and often, self-managed (Read more about how we don’t use project managers here at Boldare). This autonomy and relative freedom compared to more hierarchical organizational structures means more commitment to the project, focus on its objectives, and a strong motivation to innovate in order to build the best possible digital product.
This distributed approach to project control shares the traditional manager responsibilities across the whole team, empowering individuals to take decisions relevant to their role and experience.
To facilitate this, teamwork is also driven by transparent communication, both between team members directly working on the product’s design and code, and with the ‘wider team’ that includes the product owner and other stakeholders. With an agile project, everyone who needs to can see at any point, exactly what stage the process is at – they see progress as it is made instead of seeing nothing until a final product is presented to them.
This is in line with another core principle from the Agile Manifesto:
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
Advantage of Agile #5 – More effective use of resources
In Agile, project costs are more predictable because of the shorter sprints of activity, each focused on a specific, defined area of work. Both the development work and the development process are regularly reviewed by the team. This not only allows the project to pivot its direction in response to changing needs and circumstances but also limits how far the team can go down a dead end, thus limiting the spending of time and resources on work that proves unfruitful.
By linking budget management to sprints or iterations, resource use is aligned with the structure of the project itself, including limiting specific expenditures to specific time periods which makes it easier to align the project expenses with an overall organizational budget.
What’s more, the tightly-defined objectives for each iteration of the product, coupled with the transparent agile approach to communications, means that the client is always well-informed about costs.
For more on agile budgeting, see this article: Budgeting in agile software development.
Check also our article on how to implement Agile.
Advantage of Agile #6 – Relevant metrics
In more traditional software projects, the plan is everything (in fact, in waterfall, it’s extremely difficult to make changes once the documentation is set and approved!) and the measures of success often boil down to how the development team has delivered against the planned objectives.
Agile is more flexible and its regular reviews mean that metrics are more frequently measured, giving a more accurate picture of progress at any given time. Agile metrics focus on the quality of the results achieved (the what) but also on how the team is working; how the project is achieving those results. This gives a more holistic view of what is going on and in turn, contributes to better quality work.
Advantage of Agile #7 – Flexibility
We mentioned earlier that an agile-run development project can pivot at short notice. For each self-contained sprint or iteration, focused on a specific feature or feature set, the development team goes through a planning and review cycle, including reflection on how the agile processes are working. At Boldare, this means that every two weeks – more or less – our teams are checking project progress against project goals and ensuring that the project goals are still in line with the needs the product is intended to meet. If the priorities change, the product backlog is updated, and the focus of the next iteration is adjusted accordingly. This means that project course corrections are made at relatively short notice, ensuring minimal wasted effort.
Advantage of Agile #8 – Continuous delivery and continuous improvement
Not only are digital products developed more rapidly using Agile principles, but they also continuously improve. Between the rapid iterations and the regular testing of work-done-so-far, each version of the product is better than the last. Furthermore, thanks to transparent communications, this ongoing, cumulative progress is clearly visible to the client and other stakeholders, further engaging them in the process.
In terms of continuous improvement, thanks to Agile frameworks, like scrum, the team has the support of a scrum master (who helps with improvements in the development process) and tools/means such as team retrospective meetings that are focused on spotting issues for improvement.
Again, to quote the Manifesto:
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Advantage of Agile #9 – Better risk management
In terms of predicting risk and mitigating it, an agile approach creates tighter control than a more traditionally-run project. As well as identifying risks up front (usually done at Boldare as part of the product discovery workshop we run at the start of every project) and creating a risk management strategy, the process of regular review ensures that the project risk register is continually updated and mitigation measures are fine-tuned.
Advantage of Agile #10 – Client satisfaction
Every digital product is built for someone – usually represented in project terms by the product owner role. With the previously mentioned features of transparency, better resource management, tight focus on user and business needs, reduced risk, and improved quality of the end product, Agile working increases client satisfaction. In an agile process, the client is always in the loop and always able to influence the direction of the work.
Advantages of Agile — Boldare’s experience
At Boldare, we are committed to agile working methods and practices, as laid down in the Manifesto. After 17 years spent creating 300+ digital products for clients all over the world, we know that Agile principles give us the best results in a VUCA world. Agile gives development teams more freedom while also giving them a tight supportive structure to operate within. The result is a development project that combines both quality and value for the client, often delivered more quickly than it would have been.
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