The Benefits and Advantages of Agile

It seems like Agile is everywhere. And for good reason. It allows teams to collaborate better, focus on value and deliver with continuous improvement.

Agile was created with a simple problem in mind. Clients don’t always know what they want and designing a software product upfront (like you would a FEED construction project) doesn’t work. Many firms found this out the hard way, by releasing extremely costly software apps that were full of bugs and didn’t properly solve a user’s problem.

Ultimately, companies were building products they thought people needed - rather than what they needed.

To solve this problem, a group of developers got together on the top of a mountain to create the Agile Manifesto which laid out some rules to abide to - just like in a movie. You can see those rules at https://agilemanifesto.org

Then over years, Independent of the IT sector, agile project management developed through time and became a preferred option for many project managers.

?Why is agile such a hit?

The significance of the Agile technique in a new era of work is being recognised by firms, such as management consulting giant McKinsey & Company, which claims that "agility is catching fire." Every sector has been impacted by the quick technological development of the twenty-first century.

Software development teams adopted an Agile approach to accelerate their projects and shorten the time between product launches, but most importantly it focuses on value first, and allows you to get a “minimal viable product” to market fast and test it, whilst adapting to change as required to make a better product.

Once the tech companies became more user and customer centric, they started to take over the world with products and services that solved real world problems, and soon the largest companies were all tech.

Soon after, Agile was adopted by many types of businesses, including banks, automotives, energy, and many more to quicken their processes and stay up with the demanding future of work.

Hundreds of studies have been done on how Agile impacts business, and they are extremely positive.

• 93 percent of organizations thought their agile business units had performed “better” or “significantly better”?than their nonagile business units in both customer satisfaction and operational performance. ??
• Companies experienced 60% in revenue and profit growth.

What most companies really want to know is whether Agile adoption affects the bottom line.?

The good news is:?Accounting statistics?show that organizations that adopted agile software raked in 60% more profit.

• A global bank reduced its cost base by 30%.

Banks have also boosted the Agile adoption rate. Agile adoption not only makes you money but saves you money, too. That’s a win-win!

• The Agile failure rate is 8%, while the Waterfall failure rate is 21%.

Based on a survey conducted in 2019, the Agile failure rate is close to three times lower than the Waterfall one. So, you’re clearly better off with the former where it fits.

Where should we use Agile, or Waterfall?

When planning a project, it is important to know what framework or methodology works best so that you can get the best results.

We think of projects as complex, or complicated, and each type fits a certain framework, and you can use the Stacy Complexity model to identify where a projects fits, and what kind of methodology we need.

?Complicated Project.

Think of this like a Swiss watch. it requires upfront design, manufacture of all the parts, and carefully dropping them in the correct order or the watch will not work.

This is a typical construction project, and these types of projects fit Waterfall, Gantt charts, and traditional project controls approaches.

A Complex Project

We like to think of this like a map giving you directions from one point to another. You know where you need to end up, but the route can change depending on many variables. Or you may even decide to take a detour or change your mind on the final destination.

If you have a project like this, then it definitely is best you use an Agile approach like Scrum.

How about a Hybrid Approach?

Now that’s not to say you can’t bring the two together to deliver improvement to a set of processes within a complicated project. For example.

Agile in teams on Waterfall projects.

We implemented Agile on large scale construction projects, within Project Controls teams using Primavera. Although the team helped deliver the project using PMBOK and Waterfall methodologies, but the team operated using Agile to deliver the products they needed, with a focus on improving the time spent on BAU (business as usual) work, like weekly reporting, schedule updates.

The result was a highly collaborative Agile team of schedulers who over time improved the way they reported and updated, reducing time spent and finding better ways of doing things.

So what are the benefits?

There are so many benefits to implementing Agile in your business, both at the organizational, and personal level.

Embrace Change for the Better

Traditional ways of managing projects called for lots of upfront design, which made change extremely difficult and costly. Whereas Agile allows teams to focus on what works, re-prioritise and retrospectively pivot to deliver the most value, meaning you get the real value of a product much faster, without the upfront cost.

Stakeholder Participation

As a developer, or creative, it is extremely difficult to extract a vision from a client and get it perfect, meaning clients don’t always get what they want, and customer satisfaction is inherently lower. Agile overcomes this by involving the stakeholders in a series of “Ceremonies” such as regular product demos, and retrospectives. This gives the team more chances to comprehend the customer's vision entirely, so they deliver what clients want, rather than what they think they want.

Transparency

With an agile methodology, customers and stakeholders have a rare chance to be involved at every project stage, whilst teams have daily standups to align goals and identify blockers that they need to overcome. This ensures tightly coupled teams, aligned to goals, with progress and issues visible to all.

On-Time Delivery

New features are released fast, often, and with a high degree of predictability by adopting time-boxed, fixed-schedule Sprints of 1-4 weeks. If there is enough commercial value, this also gives a chance to beta test or release the programme earlier than anticipated.

Predictable Prices and Timeliness

Each Sprint has a set time restriction, which makes the cost predictable and constrained to the work the team can do within the established time frame. When combined with the estimates given to the client before each Sprint, the customer can more easily comprehend the estimated cost of each item, which helps decision-making on the importance of features and the need for extra iterations.

Enables Applying Change

The potential exists to continuously reorganise and prioritise the entire product backlog while maintaining the team's focus on delivering an agreed-upon subset of the product's features throughout each iteration. For the following iteration, new or modified backlog items might be prepared, giving the chance to implement modifications within the next few weeks.

Next Steps

So if you’re ready to get going and supercharge your team’s value focused delivery using Agile, then there’s a few things you need to remember.

Training – Agile works best when people know how to execute it. It places emphasis on knowledge of the process and employs a Scrum Master to make sure the team operates as a cohesive Agile unit.

So get the right training, and once you are up to speed you’ll be delivering value faster than ever.