Top 3 Challenges Of Agile MethodologyKey benefits of Agile Methodology for Businesses
Agile methodologies have become a vital factor in development testing and ensuring customer satisfaction in recent years. Agile project management has led to high-quality Agile teams providing continuous improvement in teams delivering business results.
Here, we examine the benefits of Agile project management and consider how Agile methodologies can ensure your team understands how these frameworks lead to continuous improvement and maximum customer satisfaction.
When becoming Agile, many companies struggle. Agile was developed as a response to the many issues that the traditional waterfall methodology brought to both teams and project managers. But, although Agile aims to help teams deliver products faster and better, it does not come free of challenges, especially when first implementing it.
Agile software development projects are 16 percent more productive and 37 percent faster. Agile practices have a lot of benefits providing more alignment between departments, ease of adaptability of new measures, and quicker project turnovers.
Organizations are increasingly looking at Agile as their default approach for software delivery. This article will specify the top three challenges, blockers, and barriers when adopting agile.
When To Use Agile Software Development Model
- When new changes need to be implemented. The freedom agile gives to change is very important: new changes can be implemented at very little cost because of the frequency of new increments that are produced.
- To implement a new feature the developers need to lose only the work of a few days, or even only hours, to roll back and implement it.
- Unlike the waterfall model in an agile model very limited planning is required to get started with the project. Agile assumes that the end-users needs are ever-changing in a dynamic business and IT world. Changes can be discussed and features can be newly affected or removed based on feedback. This effectively gives the customer the finished system they want or need.
- Both system developers and stakeholders alike find they also get more freedom of time and options than if the software was developed in a more rigid sequential way. Having options gives them the ability to leave important decisions until more or better data or even entire hosting programs are available; meaning the project can continue to move forward without fear of reaching a sudden standstill.
- The agile development model is also a type of Incremental model. Software is developed in incremental, rapid cycles. This results in small incremental releases with each release building on previous functionality. Each release is thoroughly tested to ensure software quality is maintained. It is used for time-critical applications. Extreme Programming (XP) is currently one of the most well-known agile development life cycle models.
Benefits of Agile Software Development
1. More Control
Incremental developments hold tremendous value for the project team and the customer. Work can be broken into parts and conducted in rapid, iterative cycles. The regular meetings that are part of agile allow project teams to share progress, discuss problems and work out solutions. They also help make the entire process more transparent.
2. Better Productivity
The incremental nature of the agile method means that projects are completed in shorter sprints, making them more manageable. It also allows products to be rolled out quickly and changes to be easily made at any point during the process.
3. Better Quality
Because it is iterative, one big benefit of agile methodology is the ability to find problems and create solutions quickly and efficiently. The flexibility of the agile method allows project teams to respond to customer reactions and constantly improve the product.
4. Higher Customer Satisfaction
Close collaboration between the project team and the customer provides immediate feedback. The customer is able to make tweaks to their expectations and desires throughout the process. The result: a more satisfied customer.
5. Higher Return on Investment
The agile method’s iterative nature also means the end product is ready for market faster, staying ahead of the competition and quickly reaping benefits. The benefits of the agile method are cutting costs and time to market in half while increasing application quality and customer satisfaction.
Top 3 Challenges Of Agile Methodology
1. Lack of Executive Commitment
By its very nature, an Agile transformation program affects large numbers of people in the organization. It’s a change that needs to be managed effectively at all levels. One of the top priorities is to establish an effective working relationship between all those that have an interest in the successful outcome of the program. It sounds simple, but it’s hard to achieve.
More often, at the executive level, the boundaries of communication and political dynamics result in a lack of involvement. Most executives get excited during the starting phase of such programs and initial pilots. However, their engagement levels drop only to monthly status meetings as the program proceeds beyond the pilot phase.
2. People and Culture
While most organizations have multiple types of culture, there tends to be one culture-type — “the way things get done around here” — that influences the vast majority of people working in that organization. In organizations with rigid top-down matrix structures (hierarchies), agility is super hard. People are fearful and less driven with low morale. Upper management and bosses usually hold the key to the next actions, decisions, and innovations.
In such environments, fostering Agile requires more than training and coaching. Based on the organization’s maturity in handling change, management techniques are required to introduce, induce and instill agile processes.
3. Lack of experience and unsuited training
If your team has no experience when it comes to Agile, implementing it can be a real pain. You can’t expect people who are used to work in a specific manner, to suddenly change their habits and become Agile experts without proper training.
But oftentimes, training is not enough and the company needs to be open to making some changes.
