How can Agile Methodology of Development Help in Better Software Delivery?

By the time a software product is ready to roll in the market, what if it loses its relevance completely? It usually happens when traditional plan-driven approach is adopted and the product development is unable to adjust to stakeholders’ progressing needs, changes in the marketplace and unforeseen technological challenges.

To counter these aforementioned issues, Agile Methodology of Development should be adopted. It is an inherently “iterative” approach that assess the direction throughout the development lifecycle, known as Sprints, at the end of which it effectively delivers a potential software product. Further, as teams can develop software at the same time they’re gathering requirements, “analysis paralysis” is less likely to impede them from making progress. Moreover, stakeholders have frequent opportunities to regulate the release of the product that is relevant and useful in the real world.

So with this methodology,  every aspect of development — from requirements to design — is continually revisited and so it is easy to change the product under development as there’s much more flexibility. Furthermore, it reduces development costs and time to market.

Five Key Business Benefits of Agile

#Building the Right Product: With Improved Quality, Visibility & Predictability

It’s quite common (in more traditional software projects) to deliver a “successful” project in terms of IT to later find that the product is not at par with the expectations. While with agile it could never happen as the emphasis is completely on building the right product.

Stakeholders tend to believe they know what they want as they specify high-level requirements for an IT or software-intensive product. However, the fact is they are mostly unable to imagine the problem accurately or it simply changes with time. Sometimes the technology is not quite as promised or the product does not actually work the way the stakeholder intended. So even though they thought they described their requirements clearly, most of the time, when they see the finished product it often does not quite solve the problem.

In such a situation, if agile development practices are used, using several short, time-boxed iterations a product could be devised that delivers the minimal functionality with high quality i.e. enough to get the job done. This approach makes it possible to demonstrate the product to stakeholders in the early stages and often enables them to decide that it meet their needs or not.

Agile methods can even help IT projects achieve release predictability as they are eradicate the problems such as - not able to use/learn the new technology; unclear requirements; or simply because the customers changed their minds after the development was nearly finished.

#Enhanced Business Engagement/Customer Satisfaction

Another most important benefit of using agile development is that it fosters positive, engaging and long-term working relationships.

Such are the principles of agile development that it encourage a cooperative collaborative approach wherein active ‘user’ involvement is asked for throughout the product’s development. This provides excellent visibility, both of the project’s progress and of the product itself, which in turn helps to ensure that expectations of key stakeholders are effectively addressed.

All that, along with the high visibility of the product and its developmental progress, and the flexibility to change when the change is needed, create much better business engagement and customer satisfaction.

#Risk Management

With agile practices, both early and parallel risk assessment and reduction could be prioritized.

The clear visibility in agile development helps to ensure that it is easier to respond to change.

Small incremental releases are made visible to the product owner and product team and any necessary decisions are taken at the earliest possible opportunity, while there’s still time to make a slight difference.

For risk areas where there might be multiple solutions and all the teams cannot agree on the right alleyway, multi-set development is considered. Herein multiple teams work in parallel on solving the same problem with different solutions and it most likely bring key decisions forward.

#Cost Control

When agile is used, the scope of the product and its features keep evolving. However, the cost could be controlled and fixed budget be allocated because the timescales are fixed.

 #Rewarding Experience

In the agile paradigm, instead of big specs, requirements are discussed in workshops; instead of lengthy status reports, collaboration happens around a task-board discussing progress. Similarly, it is discussed what’s right for the product, project and the team instead of making long project plans and change management committees.

This kind of cooperation and collaboration make agile development much more enjoyable for most people. It is a rewarding approach wherein everyone involved remains highly motivated and delivers high performance.

Conclusion

Agile development emphasizes on teamwork and calls for much more commitment and effort from everyone involved. So it can help companies and empower teams to continuously re-plan their release to optimize its value throughout development and allowing them to be as competitive as possible in the marketplace. Indeed, advantages that agile methodology of development offers are compelling.