Agile Methodology - The Current Business Strategy

In today’s current situation, businesses around the world are compelled to take a swift move to survive. Many businesses are presently working on renewing their current business strategy by going digital. Most of the businesses fail to implement the right technology to revamp their business, as a result, they fail to respond faster to customer’s demands more productively.

The right technology can assist businesses to manage a digital transformation strategy that ensures long time success in a competitive market. More than 86% of companies prefer to use cloud computing for their businesses as they know that it is important when it comes to digital transformation.

So, what do you believe is the common ability that businesses are manifesting nowadays to overcome the crisis? And, the answer is Agility. Businesses are implementing Agile methodology with cloud computing as it is considered as an excellent combination to deliver faster results with better customer experience.

Here, in this blog, we are going to discuss What Agile is, and how to make it work for your business. keep reading…

What is Agile Methodology?

Agile Methodology is an iterative, incremental, and collaborative approach to deal with project management that assists teams to keep up with the demands of the modern work environment. It comprises various strategies and all of them depend on the ideas of transparency, flexibility, quality, and continuous delivery.

It began in 2001 with the Agile Manifesto and was initially made for software development. With time, Agile evolved and turned into a well-known decision for many project managers from different industries.

Do you know why Agile development has become popular over the various sectors? It’s simple – in this ever-evolving technology world, only those businesses survive that can evolve quickly, which is known as the Agile approach.

Agile: The Winning Approach than Any Other

While comparing to all other approaches like Waterfall, Kanban, and Scrum, Agile appears to be the best of all. The reason behind Agile being the winning approach is its relevance to the current digital transformation era.

Waterfall follows a linear outlook and doesn’t adjust well to returning into the procedures to make changes. While Kanban is simply centered around how to improve the procedure – it doesn’t generally think about the final product.

Scrum is considered as the version of Agile, which uses cross-functional teams to organize work into small manageable parts that can be finished within a given time, called sprints. Faster response on the customer’s feedback is the main factor of the scrum, which mostly focuses on quality and speed. Thus, it proves to be the best – particularly during the current emergency.

Agile promotes flexibility and synchronized operations that break down into smaller sprints focusing on continuous delivery. Its cross-functional nature allows you to achieve the final product keeping the team morale up with quick collaboration.

Benefits of Using an Agile Methodology

Here are some top advantages of Agile methodology that makes the managers’ job easier and encourages them to deal with their business projects:

Enhances Quality

With Agile methodology, teams can breakdown projects into sprints and collaborate with other teammates or clients to deliver a quality product. This approach enables teams to manage common pitfalls smartly like costs, scope, deadlines, etc. Testing is an integrated part of the project implementation process, which allows teams to identify and resolve issues quickly to avoid any long-term negative consequences.

Boosts Agility and Flexibility

This practice plays a crucial role in software development. If there is a variation from the initial objectives, the approach is immediately adapted to meet the requirements. The Scrum method, one of the most used Agile methods, is considered a lot nowadays for software development teams and their technical tasks as it is quick to set up. It is based on an experimental approach, which allows enterprises to fuse changes that can help improve the product.

Real-Time Visibility of Project Progress

Another advantage of using an agile methodology is the visibility of every project. This Agile business strategy allows your clients to feel more involved in the project by giving constant feedback to the team. They can check what the team is doing and ask for changes whenever they want throughout the project development process. This builds up a relationship of trust between the team and the clients that can prompt improved customer satisfaction.

Faster Time-to-Market

According to the survey, 74% of IT and business leaders believe that Agile methods help accelerate time-to-market. With an Agile approach, the organization gets an opportunity to invest maximum time in planning, collaborating, and focusing on business objectives with speed. This helps to launch the product/service with the latest technology and make it available for the customers. Faster time-to-market means enhanced trails, which leads to improved performance with better customer experience.

Involvement of Stakeholders

A key part of using an Agile methodology is the involvement of stakeholders during the completion of the projects. By working together with various partners during project development, you will build on the trust and confidence of each team member. To use this method effectively, include stakeholders to collaborate actively in the development process with daily progress reports for better transparency, collaboration, feedback integration, and quality check. This ensures that tasks are completed as per plan and make changes if necessary.

Upgrade Cost Control

An agile method also improves control over the cost of business projects. After every stage, the team audits the budget while making future business decisions. Then, they decide whether to continue, suspend, or drop the project. This is an important part of project development as it allows teams to understand the costs of each feature to make strategic business decisions.

How to Make Agile Approach Work in Your Business

Considering how you can adopt the Agile way to deal with your business?

Start by going digital and organize a powerful digital strategy into place. Shed the traditional business processes and bring responsiveness within the development operations by implementing the latest tools and technologies as per market needs. This is the most basic step that will assist you to stay relevant in a constantly changing market.

Then, set a few goals and deadlines in place. Add project constraints for every task of yours to ensure you don’t invest over time harping on one small task. This streamlines your tasks and self-organizes the team. In this way, high priority tasks will always be done as per schedule with faster time-to-market – causing negligible misfortunes to the business.

Consistently check the quality and adjust accordingly. Work in collaboration with an accomplice who will check your work-in-progress regularly and immediately informs you about the iterations if required. This will permit you to quickly address your slip-ups and stay away from any difficulties later. This procedure is significant, as it will guarantee that the client’s requirements are being met regardless of whether the conditions are flimsy or eccentric.

Ensure you’re following the Agile mindset for development and look for opportunities to improvise. Rather than getting on the result and quickly moving onto the next task, teams should re-check the project thoroughly and do some self-questioning like- Is there a way they can improve the result? What should be possible to achieve better outcomes? – This assists business to stay one step ahead of competitors.

Lastly, don’t be afraid to take bold decisions. If you are the CEO, let your team feel that their work and commitment are valued. Encourage them to share ideas, feedback, and ask queries because it’s your people who know your business the best. If they are satisfied so are your clients.

Go Agile!

In the current competitive market scenario, Agile methodology is one key supporter for businesses to maintain their operations and achieve competitive profits. It enables you to develop quickly as per market conditions without losing the competition.

This blog gives you a clarification of the concept ‘Agile’ and gives you an idea of how as a business you need to approach the constantly changing market with Agile methodology and survive in dire situations. A definitive aim is to meet your business objectives keeping customers’ goals in mind at minimum costs and maximum profits in the process.

Agile Methodology: The Current Business Strategy