What makes Agile great?

Is not it remarkable to note that we are often months or even years very busy on one side with al kinds of things in a rapidly changing world, and on the other side try to realize good ideas. And then at the end, the product does not seem to fit in this future world anymore, in other words, we're late! For decades, people have been struggling with the following problems: the product is not what the customer needs, users are not satisfied with the solution, the development is overpriced and deadlines are not met. Agile is a powerful answer to these problems. These advantages offered by the work in accordance with Agile be explained below.

Higher productivity
It is difficult to define what productivity really means in a development context. The traditional way to measure productivity is to determine the number or the quantity of finished products per unit of time. For example, the number of tons of refined oil, the number of cars produced or manufactured the number of cartridges.

The amount of (sub) product seems interesting enough, but is less relevant than it seems. Only the quantity of finished products sold per unit of time is relevant to the turnover of a company. When it comes to productivity, we would really only need to look at the end products that offer (more) value for a customer. The rest (products that do not add value) is pure waste.

Besides value delivered, costs are also relevant metrics for productivity. After all, if value comes at a very very high cost, we speak generally about low productivity.

In product development, however, the costs are largely determined by the used equipment or personnel. Therefore, only by resources and staff to create more value, more sales and thus made more profit. This is exactly what Agile does. Agile puts strong emphasis on delivering value.

This emphasis on value (which can be expressed in monetary terms, story points), makes it more likely that a positive Return On Investment (ROI) can be achieved and is an important argument for managers to embark on an organization-wide Agile transformation.

Quality improvement
The ninth Agile principle is: "Continuous attention to technical mastery and sound design enhance agility. This emphasis on quality. In practice, this is achieved in two ways: (1) by the skill and even promote the mastery and (2) by common (short-cycle) to yield a working (controlled, tested) product. Both aspects provide a significant improvement in quality, compared to a traditional approach.

Quality has many aspects, such as process quality, the number of errors in solutions and the experience of the end user. If that experience is good, the end user would like to use the product and therefore the business value higher. That is ultimately what quality actually shows, a right product at right cost, and that translates into a positive ROI.

Delivering more value
Delivering more products sounds positive not?, but if not delivered the right products, it is wasteful. The Agile values foster close collaboration with the customer and therefore the focus of the production is the right thing, namely what the customer finds most important. As a result, is supplied more value, and is making unwanted (sub) products avoided.

Be a much more innovative company
An important aspect of a transformation to Agile's growth to an innovative (corporate) culture of learning and continuous improvement is the norm, which is fully accepted and supported by people from the lowest worker till highest management. The main consequence of this is, that this culture itself ensures that the organization will continue to perform consistently good, because they will adapt to the market conditions and regulations. An HR manager will find that staff would like to work for the organization as creativity, self-motivation, and teamwork are encouraged. The organization will thus be seen as an attractive employer.

Greater employee satisfaction
In addition to the 'hard' results are also expected benefits in human terms, namely: an often very positive atmosphere that you hear in statements along the lines: "I will never work differently" and "I will also inform my colleagues”. By emphasizing quality, the result is better and therefore the extent to which you can be proud of your work. The promotion of cooperation encourages team spirit, confidence and gives room for openness.

Highly educated people like to wear like responsibility for the work they do and they want while using their creativity and craftsmanship. This fits in with the Agile principles of self-organization with motivated individuals and technical mastery. These 'soft' results should certainly not be underestimated, they are the basis for achieving the quantitative benefits such as increased productivity, quality and faster time to market and especially on the longer term for the securing there higher value to the customer.