By Amelie Emma
In today’s era of digital technology, the term ‘Agile’ has become a common phenomenon. Although the principles of agile were originally created for software development, they are applied to virtually every part of a business organization.
This question often comes to mind: how did Agile become the latest buzz in the industry? The deeper I research, the more vivid and crystal clear my perception of Agile becomes. Industry experts claim that Agile is the new messiah that is likely to revolutionize the industry with new ideas and provide solutions to difficult problems. Agile is considered one of the best methodologies to ensure smooth and efficient running of a project.
But there are some questions that keep running through my mind: Is Agile real or is it just a hype? If it really exists, how could Agile principles be useful to my organization? How does it work?
This article covers some of the key places where Agile can be applied. Let me explain five key reasons to adopt Agile values and principles that can benefit your business over a long period of time. Let’s start!
1. Protect the interests of stakeholders
Agile is said to protect the interests of various stakeholders in the project, be it the project manager, the customer or the testing team. It provides better visibility of the project and drives success. By implementing Agile principles in the company, it encourages the active involvement of every team member and ensures smooth functioning of the project so that stakeholder expectations and requirements are met and managed effectively.
2. Increase time-to-market
Agile principles with incremental delivery typically have a fast time to market and generate higher revenues. This enables rapid delivery of projects and ensures higher customer satisfaction.
The Agile development philosophy therefore supports early project releases and maintains the banana principle. It is important to note that reinforcing Agile principles within the system will not only help the company keep the project on track, but also save unnecessary costs.
3. Manage risks
Small Agile incremental releases made visible to the project team allow them to identify any issues early during the development phase and make it easier for them to respond to changes. This also allows the product team to make the necessary decisions as quickly as possible, while still having time to make a substantial difference to the final outcome.
By implementing Agile principles within your organization, you can anticipate critical challenges and make necessary adjustments to the process where necessary. This way you protect your company from risky situations.
4. Maintain quality
Quality is an aspect of project deliverables that is feared by the entire development team. The reason for this is that in an Agile process, testing starts as soon as we have the project requirements at hand. Agile is quite different from the traditional waterfall model, where testing only takes place once the product is fully developed.
By applying Agile principles to your company, you can optimize your product as much as possible during the development phase and make adjustments where necessary and provide the product team with early insight into relevant quality issues.
5. Ensure customer satisfaction
By implementing Agile principles, there is active participation from the product owner who ensures better visibility of the product, measures its progress in terms of development and provides the flexibility to make changes where and when necessary.
This helps the product team to create better business engagement and ultimately ensure effective customer satisfaction. This is therefore a crucial advantage that can help create positive, long-lasting and fruitful working relationships with customers.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Agile is like a mantra that has its fair share of followers and critics. Although several reviewers like to criticize Agile’s shortcomings, it also has some advantages.
Agile is a value-driven process. If you are planning to implement Agile in your business organization, make sure that you first understand its importance and then adopt it seriously, otherwise you can never expect any fruitful outcome from its use. Remember, it is ultimately up to you to encourage the use of Agile principles in your business and build quality products from their implementation.