Agile project management is certainly creating a buzz in many IT enterprises around the world. It is not surprising to see the widespread adoption of Agile as it plugs many loopholes of traditional project management approaches and helps enterprises meet complex market demands.
1. Agile Provides Better Value:
Agile philosophy is centered on creating value and accomplishment for both customer and the user. Because projects are performed in several small iterations, even the features are delivered in an increment manner which enables benefits to be realized in the earlier stages. Moreover, the project sponsor’s investment cannot be exceeded and there is a cap on project spending.
2. Time-to-Market is Evenly Paced:
It is for this reason why Agile is so popular around the world. In fact, research suggests that 80% of the market leaders are those who were first to market. Agile philosophy respects the notion of urgency with regular releases in an incremental manner which brings in better revenue.
3. Innovation Through Collaboration:
We all know that Agile project teams are cross-functional teams. And Agile respects innovation during iterations which can help in creating new features that makes the product more versatile and gain the upper hand over the competition provided the customer buys in.
4. Improved Quality:
One of the key principles in Agile project management is that testing is done throughout the project lifecycle. This enables well-planned inspection of the working product at regular intervals when it is being developed. This allows the project manager to make course corrections if there is any deviation from the original requirement and helps the project team to snuff out quality issues.
5. Better Transparency:
Agile follows a bottom-up approach rather than a top-down and encourages the active participation of the customer and other stakeholders throughout the product development stage. There is better transparency of activities and teams are given the opportunity to find solutions. This transparency allows stakeholders to gain critical information with regards to the project’s progress which in turn ensures expectations are managed effectively.
6. Superior Risk Management:
In Agile, small incremental releases are made visible to the project stakeholders and the team throughout the development stages to identify potential risks. This ensures it is easier to change the product features during the initial development stages of the product where there is still an opportunity to make a difference to the final outcome.
7. Agile is Flexible:
In the past, traditional projects had a rigid structure, and changing something in the middle of a project was too expensive due to scope creep. In Agile project management, change is accepted. Because we all know change is inevitable and for this reason the timescale is fixed and requirements may emerge during the development stage throughout the project lifecycle. For this to work, the project needs an active sponsor who can shield the project team from all the difficult work of trading existing scope for new, trade-off decisions, schedules, and budget.
8. Customer Satisfaction a Priority:
There is more prominence towards customer satisfaction by building the right product that meets their original requirements. Agile ensures active involvement of all the project stakeholders including the customer and provides high visibility of progress in a project. Teams should be flexible to incorporate change when it is needed to create better business engagement with the customer. Providing better customer satisfaction acts as an important benefit from which enterprises can harness positive and enduring working relationships.
9. Right Product is the Main Concern:
In traditional projects, it is very common to deliver successful projects and find in the end that it was not the product that was expected or hoped for. In Agile development, the requirements emerge and evolve all the time and the ability to change according to the new requirements is what separates Agile project management from the rest of the traditional methodologies. In Agile, the emphasis is entirely on building the right product.
10. More Fun and Rewarding Experience:
Agile is all about collaboration. Collaboration of cross-functional teams, the active involvement and cooperation among team members, stakeholders, and customers make it that much more enjoyable place for most people. There are no big specifications up-front, lengthy status reports, long project plans, and a change committee board. Instead, team members discuss requirements in workshops, collaborate around the task board to discuss project progress and teams discuss what is right for the project and are empowered to take decisions. This makes it all the more fun and the experience are much more rewarding for everyone involved.
Agile and its advantages are far more compelling for one not to implement in their organization. But, it needs commitment from everyone involved. You might find Agile very difficult in the beginning, but when teams have worked on a couple of sprints it gets all the more interesting and enjoyable to work in an Agile framework. Agile and its motto of developing the right product at all costs hold in good stead with the trends to follow in the service industry across the globe.
