Agile in Development – these are just some of the benefits realised using an Agile approach within your organisation and project management.
1. Increase Revenue
Most organisations are motivated by the inherent value synonymous with early delivery of benefits. The iterative nature of agile development means that features are developed, tested and delivered incrementally, enabling a steady delivery and realisation of benefits as the product evolves.
2. Increase Customer Satisfaction
The active involvement of business and user representatives and/or product owner, the high visibility of the product (frequent working prototypes etc.) and progress, and the flexibility to change when change is needed, create much more cohesive business engagement and ultimate customer satisfaction. This is an important benefit that has been proven to create positive and enduring working relationships.
3. Manage your risk
Delivery of small incremental releases made visible to the product owner and product team during the development of the evolving solution, means that risks and issues are identified early, enabling more rapid responsiveness to change. The clear visibility in agile development (along with daily communications between the team and customer stakeholders) helps to ensure that any necessary decisions can be taken at the earliest possible opportunity, while there’s still time to make a material difference to the outcome.
4. Be more flexible
In agile development, change is not only accepted, but is expected, embraced and built into the agile ‘fabric’. Timescales are the fixed component here, so that the ‘depth’ of requirements may emerge and evolve as the product is developed.
5. Promote visibility / manage expectations
Agile development principles encourage active user involvement throughout the product’s development and a very cooperative, collaborative approach. This provides constant visibility for key stakeholders, both of the project’s progress and of the product itself, which in turn helps to ensure that expectations are effectively managed, and that feedback cycles are effectively incorporated.
6. Ensure quality
A key principle of agile development is that quality is non-negotiable as a trade-off option. Testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This allows the product owner to make adjustments if necessary and gives the product team early sight of any quality issues emerging.
7. Increase Speed-to-market
We live in an incredibly fast-paced and competitive global economy. Research suggests that approximately 80% of all current market leaders were first to market. As well as the higher revenue from incremental delivery, agile development philosophy also supports the notion of early and regular releases.
8. Control Costs
The agile philosophy of fixed timescales and evolving requirements enables a fixed budget. This means that the scope (features) of the product are variable, rather than the cost.
9. Build the right product, first time
By allowing requirements to emerge and evolve, and embracing change (within an environment of close collaboration with the customer), the team will build the right product. It’s all too common in more traditional projects to deliver a “successful” project only to discover that the product is not what the customer expected, needed or wished for. In agile development, the emphasis is a firm focus on building the right product.
10. Have more fun doing it!
Agile teams have more fun! The active involvement, cooperation and collaboration which is at the heart of the agile philosophy, make agile development environments a much more enjoyable and energetic place for innovation. Teams are self-managing, which means they’re empowered to make decisions, and collaborate to solve problems.
For more information on how PM-Partners can assist your business in up-skilling your staff around their current level of Project Management knowledge, speak to one of our qualified customer service team today on 1300 70 13 14.
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