8 Ways You Can Benefit from Agile Development Today

Today the term ‘Agile’ is frequently used in the world of IT. This popular method of software development focuses on delivering high-quality solutions while minimising project expenses and increasing business value.

For many years IT professionals had to deal with projects that were over schedule and over budget but didn’t always provide significant benefits to clients. Moreover, many of them lacked the understanding of customer needs and expectations. To address these challenges more and more teams turned to the Agile methodology because of its ability to increase client engagement and team collaboration.

Here are 8 ways how Agile can improve the effectiveness of your software development today.

#1. Stakeholder engagement

Agile gives lots of opportunities to engage with stakeholders before, during and after each sprint. Such a collaboration between the client and the team allows to truly understand the client’s needs and product vision.

#2. Transparency

Clients are involved throughout the whole project – from prioritising features to review sessions. This increases the client’s trust in the team’s ability to deliver the required solution on time and budget.

#3. Quick delivery

Time-boxed, fixed schedule, sprints of one-four weeks allow to deliver new features quickly and frequently. This also provides the opportunity to release the software earlier than planned if there is sufficient business value.

#4. Predictable costs and schedule

Each sprint lasts a fixed amount of time, so the cost is easy to predict as it’s limited to the amount of work that can be done in the fixed time box. This helps the client to understand the cost of each feature which directly influences how these features will be prioritised and whether there is a need for additional iterations.

#5. Opportunity for change

Agile gives an opportunity to stay flexible and constantly reprioritize the product backlog. New items can be planned for the next iteration, which allows to introduce changes within a few weeks.

#6.  Focuses on business value

As the client participates in the prioritising of features, the team understands what’s matter most for the customer and delivers features that provide the most business value.

#7. Focuses on users

Agile uses user stories as they allow to focus on features that satisfy needs of real users. This also gives the opportunity to test software after each sprint and get user feedback to see whether something should be changed.

#8. Improved quality

Producing frequent builds and conducting testing during each iteration helps to find and fix defects quickly and improve quality throughout the whole project cycle.