Contemporary project management and software development services have been revolutionized by agile. Let’s learn more about Agile Development and its exciting advantages.
What is agile?
Agile is an iterative project management and software development approach that helps teams deliver value to customers faster and with less effort. Instead of betting everything on “big bang” releases, agile teams do work in small, consumable chunks. Needs, plans, and results are constantly being evaluated, so teams have a natural mechanism for responding quickly to change.
Product development (or any type of planning) has proven to be very successful when done in “smaller chunks” because teams can accomplish their goals more quickly and with fewer obstacles. The main reason: project risk and change management happen in real-time, not traditional project management
Agile is more based on ideas such as user and customer satisfaction, product (or project) quality, flexibility, transparency, and continuous improvement and delivery (often referred to as CD).
In this post, we take a detailed look at the many benefits of agile development and explain why these are compelling reasons to consider Agile. These exciting advantages of agile software development for a software development services company include:
Stakeholder Engagement
Agile provides multiple stakeholder and team engagement opportunities before, during, and after each sprint. By involving the client at every step of the project, a high level of collaboration is achieved between the client and the project team, giving the team more opportunities to understand the client’s vision truly. Delivering working software early and often increases stakeholders’ confidence in the team’s ability to deliver high-quality working software and encourages them to become more deeply involved in the project.
Transparency
Agile methods allow customers to be involved throughout the project, from feature prioritization to iteration planning and review meetings to frequent software build that includes new features. However, it also requires customers to understand that what they see is a work in progress in exchange for the added benefits of transparency.
Early and Predictable Delivery
The delivery of new features can be done quickly and frequently with high predictability using defined, fixed sprints of 1-4 weeks. It also allows the software to be released or tested earlier than planned if there is sufficient business value.
Predictable Cost and Schedule
Because each Sprint has a fixed duration, costs are predictable and limited by the amount of work the team can accomplish within the fixed schedule. Combined with estimates provided to customers before each Sprint, customers can more easily understand the estimated cost of each feature, improving feature prioritization decisions and the need for future iterations.
Allows for Changes
While each iteration requires the team to focus on delivering a coherent subset of the product’s functionality, there are opportunities to refine and reorder the overall product backlog continually. New or changed backlog items can be scheduled for the next iteration, allowing changes to be implemented in a matter of weeks.
Focus on Business Value
By allowing customers to prioritize features, the team understands what is most important to the customer’s business and can provide the features that deliver the greatest business value.
User Oriented
The delivery of new features can be done quickly and frequently with high predictability using defined, fixed sprints of 1-4 weeks. By focusing functions on the needs of the right users, each function provides additional value rather than just one IT component. It also allows beta testing of the software after each sprint, gaining valuable feedback early in the project and allowing changes to be made as needed.
Quality Improvement
By dividing projects into manageable units, project teams can focus on high-quality development, testing, and collaboration. In addition, by generating frequent versions and testing and revising them during each iteration, quality is improved by quickly finding and fixing defects and early identification of anticipated inconsistencies. In my own experience using agile software development practices, I have seen the timely delivery of solutions and higher levels of client and customer satisfaction. By incorporating the ability to change, you will be able to better incorporate feedback from demos, usability testing, and client and customer feedback.
Final Words
Agile is a powerful software development tool that benefits the development team and provides many important business benefits to customers. Agile helps project teams deal with many of the most common project pitfalls (such as cost, schedule predictability, and scope deviation) in a more controlled manner. Moreover, agile achieves the same goals in an easier and more business-focused way by restructuring and transforming the activities involved in custom software development.
Author Bio: Vishnu Narayan is a content writer works at ThinkPalm Technologies. He is a passionate writer, a tech enthusiast, and an avid reader who tries to tour the globe with a heart that longs to see more sunsets than Netflix!
