Having “Lean, Fast and Better” projects is the mantra of the agile methodologies. Almost all methodologies have their fan following, as well as their antiquated critics, and Agile is no exception to this rule. It is often compared with the waterfall model, as well as, other relatively new methodologies like Six Sigma, Extreme Programming and DSDM.
In simple words, Agile is a collection of core principles.
- Ensure customer satisfaction by frequently delivering working software.
- Use fully empowered, cross-functional and self-organizing, teams.
- Use hi-fidelity communication preferably face-to-face to promote team collaboration.
- Practice simplicity.
- Use feedback loops and other continuous improvement principals to ensure the process stays self-correcting.
The basic principle of any agile methodology is to keep things simple and avoid un-necessary overhead. However, for any company, transitioning and successfully adopting a new methodology is easier said than done. Many companies are often stuck with questions such as:
- Why agile?
- Does agile compromise on quality?
- Will agile work for me?
- What benefits do I get by adopting agile?
- Since the inception of agile, many companies ranging from a handful of employees to large multi-national corporations have reaped the benefits of adopting agile. In this article, we discuss the top 5 reasons why companies choose agile methodologies over other approaches.
1. Faster Time to Market
Getting your product to market as fast as possible is amongst any company’s top goals when conceptualizing a product. It is also a driving reason to follow any project management methodology. A shorter time to market helps get ‘early mover’ advantage for your product, as well as, help recover ROI faster.
Simple reasons explain why agile offers a faster time to market as compared to other methodologies:
- The Agile Principle of Simplicity enables development to start earlier and thus provide value earlier.
- Potentially shippable product is delivered after every iteration (which typically spans less than a month), with product evolving incrementally over the course of multiple iterations. This allows management to give early access to a beta or trial version to generate buzz in the market and get early feedback. Agile teams have short feedback cycles which start much earlier during the project than with other methodologies.
- The most valuable product features make up early project iterations; which provides greater customer value on initial releases and lowers the overall risk of the project.
Many companies have demonstrated that agile can reduce time to market by as much as 30% - 40%.
2. Greater Savings
Agile reduces project ‘wastes’ and helps ensure that tasks done in the project add value. Agile reduces costs by streamlining processes to attain savings of 30% – 70% over a project following traditional methodologies, such as Waterfall. The following key factors of agile help reduce projects costs for agile organizations.
- Organizations obtain higher productivity and efficiency by reducing superfluous processes, such as detailing requirements which are never developed; extra features (rarely used or wish list features); task switching (switching resources across multiple projects and tasks which results in a loss of flow); and most importantly, testing and customer feedback phases.
- The minimal overhead approaches of agile, such as ‘lean flow’, translates into indirect savings.
- Agile offers in-flight return on investment which translates into greater overall project savings. In some cases, companies can break even with an early release to market while future features are still under development.
3. Greater Flexibility to Mid-Stream Changes in Market Conditions
With agile, it is a lot cheaper to introduce changes late in the project. Some reasons for this are incremental development, the unique qualities of user stories, and continuous quality assurance. As such, Agile has a lower cost of change curve as compared to most traditional methodologies. The following key factors of agile enable greater flexibility to mid-stream changes in market conditions:
- Since iterations are short, a change in market conditions can be more quickly adapted by subsequent iterations.
- User stories (requirements) do not need to be rigorously ordered, thus lowering the impact of mid-stream changes.
- Test automation and continuous integration help ensure high quality even with late stage changes.
4. Reduced Defects
Agile projects have much lower late stage defects than projects following traditional methodologies. The following reasons account for the reduction of defects using agile:
- Test automation and continuous integration help to identify defects before they are incorporated into the core code.
- Defects are identified and fixed during an iteration- as no story is considered to be complete until it has zero critical defects.
- Critical defects are caught early in the project and the test automation safety net helps ensure that once fixed, they do not creep up in later iterations.
5. Greater Transparency
The agile methodology is a true advocate for greater transparency amongst stakeholders in a project. The following key factors illustrate how agile emphasizes transparency for a project:
- Daily team status is provided during the Daily Huddle.
- Delivery of shippable product at the end of each iteration ensures hidden problems, such as integration, are exposed early and frequently.
- Relevant information is provided throughout the project so executives are able to take action early to ensure project success.
There are millions of agile success stories to report about. We hope Platinum Edge can help your company be the next one.