Agile at its best and worst!
Sonali Gupta
Inspiring Effective Leadership and Sustainable Success | Advocating Work-Life Balance | Sharing Insights | Helping you achieve your goals
I have been working with Agile project management for the past couple of years and have talked to some?of my colleagues?on the same as well to understand the benefits and challenges they are facing, I knew we would not be the only ones!
Interestingly, it reveals the diverse perspectives people hold on it. In my view, it is one of the most open-ended project methodologies. It gives the product owner flexibility to pick and mould the agile ceremonies and adapt to them to make their team the most efficient( it is best not to miss Planning, Review and Retrospective, they are the foundation and help you learn and improvise with each passing sprint).
Agile methodology is well known for its phased development of small, viable projects and a continuous improvement approach which facilitates the team to make rapid progress. However, this focus leads to misinterpretation and overlooking other critical factors that need equal attention:
Agile is all about agility and adaptability, somehow most teams become so rigid in following the ceremonies that this simply adds unnecessary complexity to the process refraining the team from the actual benefits of the process
Not following the proper software development principles is another one! Just for the sake of developing the product fast, does not justify building a poor-quality product. A product where you will struggle with technical debt and scalability of the product in future
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Half-baked knowledge about the process within the teams. No process is a magic wand. Any process can deliver value only if done properly and with adequate knowledge. If my user story is not clear it will simply add to the confusion and vague results, which means re-doing and slowing the process and not the desired outcome
Communication is again a very important aspect of the methodology which is usually not given its much-needed love.
The successful implementation of this methodology very much needs an open mindset and the teams have to be well-equipped with the right knowledge. Agile is not to be hardwired to it, but to adapt and make it work for your organization on each project level!