The 8 advantages of using an agile methodology

Using an agile methodology represents more advantages than you think. And so, organizations know. According to the 2017 Success Rates Rise study of the Project Management Institute (PMI), 71% of them use an agile method in their development process. In fact, the study states that “in the last 12 months, one out of five projects has used agile approaches.” In addition, according to PwC, the agile method is 28% more successful than traditional methods.

However, before discussing this it is pertinent to define what is an agile method? First of all, the “agile” concept is defined by the Agile alliance as “the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing and finally succeeding in an uncertain and turbulent environment. ”

This concept was acquired by a series of developers in 2002, creating the so-called “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”. It specifies 12 principles among which are: customer satisfaction and early and continuous delivery of software, accepting that requirements change, business managers and developers working together, continuous attention and simplicity, among others. As a whole, agile methodology is an approach on interaction, communication and the reduction of intermediate artifacts that consume lots of resources. It can be extrapolated even to new organizational cultures so that “teams feel the owners of what they do, acting autonomously and with agility based on permanent customer feedback,” according to Semana magazine. Under this, what are the advantages of preferring an agile software development stack ?, At Tecnova we tell you, let’s review!

1- Stakeholder participation

Agile offers multiple opportunities for the participation of interested parties (client and developer) and the team, before, during and after each stage of the work to be developed.By involving the client in each step of the project, there is a high degree of collaboration between the client and the project team. This provides more opportunities for the team to truly understand the customer’s vision.

The idea regarding this aspect is to develop early work software. Increasing the confidence of those interested in the team´s ability to deliver high quality work software.

2- Transparency

An agile methodology is a unique opportunity for customers to get involved throughout the project, from the prioritization of features to the planning of iterations and review sessions, to frequent software compilations that may contain new features.

Nevertheless, this also requires customers to understand they are seeing a work in progress in exchange for this additional transparency benefit.

3- Early and predictable delivery

Through the use of fixed-schedule Sprints for 1-4 weeks, new features are delivered quickly and frequently, with a high level of predictability. This also provides the opportunity to launch or test the beta software earlier than planned, if there is enough commercial value.

4- Predictable costs and schedules

Due to the fact that each Sprint has a fixed duration, the cost is predictable and is limited to the amount of work the equipment can do. This way, the client is able to more easily understand the approximate cost of each function, which improves decision making on the priority of functions and the need for additional iterations.

5- Allows change

While the team must remain focused on delivering an agreed subset of the product features during each iteration, there is an opportunity to constantly refine and prioritize the overall product order book. The elements of the portfolio of new or modified orders can be planned for the next iteration (repetition), which provides the opportunity to make changes in a few weeks.

6- It focuses on commercial value

By allowing the client to stablish the priority of the functions, the developing team manages to understand what is most important to the client’s business and can offer the functions that provide the greatest commercial value.

7- It focuses on users

The agile method routinely uses user stories with acceptance criteria focused on the business to define product characteristics. By focusing functions on the needs of real users, each function offers incremental value, not just an IT component.

This also provides the opportunity to test the beta software after each Sprint, gathering valuable comments at the beginning of the project and providing the ability to make changes as necessary.

8- Improve quality

By dividing the project into manageable units, the project team can focus on high quality development, testing and collaboration. In addition, by producing frequent compilations and conducting tests and revisions during each iteration, quality improves by finding and correcting defects quickly and identifying expectations mismatches early.

In Chile, there are companies that prefer this type of development due to all the described advantages. Above all, when Virtus Partners launched its Digital Maturity Index, it was determined that only 37% of companies are in an initial stage of Digital Transformation.