This Page covers- WHY AGILE | WHAT IS AGILE, AGILE VALUES & PRINCIPLES | AGILE PRACTICES| BENEFITS OF AGILE | AGILE VS WATERFALL – Which One Suits Better?
WHY AGILE
Competition in the market is high, ever changing and is demanding. There is a challenge to the existing products, services and solutions because the taste, needs and wants of the end users, which pretty much defines the market competition, is changing. So as to beat this competition, organizations must not only be innovative in their product, service and solution offerings but equally innovative in the way they can deliver their products and deliver them with quality and as quickly as possible!
Agile way of delivering products is the solution to beat the market competition and deliver products, services or solutions quickly to the end users or customers. Agile can be defined in many ways but at the heart it is the ability of an organization to respond quickly to the changes and deliver solutions with speed to maximize value to the end customers at the earliest. This approach enables early feedback from customer on the delivered solution, its viability and usability thus enabling solution providers to assess and ascertain the return over the investment.
WHAT IS THIS AGILE APPROACH
An alternative to the traditional project management approaches, characterized by delivering valuable, working products or solution or a service through an incremental and iterative delivery cadence, with focus on Business representing end users / customers and solution providers (example IT people) working closely together in a very collaborative (where ever possible in face-to-face) manner. In this approach, requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. It demands frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that empowers teams, and a set of engineering practices that promotes rapid delivery of high-quality working product. Illustration of Agile approach below.
There are number of agile practices (example Scrum, Kanban, etc.) that are available but all of them have the Agile Principles and Values at their core. We will look at these as we move forward. First let us focus on foundations.
AGILE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES- FOCUS ON FOUNDATIONS
Effective transformation requires a focus on all three: The Values, Principles and the Practices to achieve desired benefits.
AGILE VALUES
[From www.AgileManifesto.org February 11-13, 2001 Agile Values]
Through this work we have come to value …
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
• Individuals and Interactions OVER Process and Tools
• Working Software OVER Comprehensive Documentation
• Customer Collaboration OVER Contract Negotiation
• Responding to Change OVER Following a Plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more. Let us elaborate these a bit more.
PRINCIPLES OF AGILE:
AGILE PRACTICES
Below are the two most prevalent Agile practices. There are some others but Scrum and Kanban are hit as they are simple to understand but that does not mean these are easy to master. Scrum is little prescriptive compared to Kanban which is more of adaptive approach. See Shu-Ha-Ri a 3-step learning model. SCRUM Vs KANBAN
| SCRUM | KANBAN |
| Iterative planning practices | Continuous flow |
| Time-boxing | Make work visible |
| Incremental delivery | Limit work in process |
| Continuous improvement | Continuous improvement |
Both of the above practices embody the agile fundamentals of Iterative development, Feedback, Collaboration and Increment of value.
BENEFITS TO CLAIM THROUGH AGILE
Benefits that companies want to claim may differ based on the needs of the customer, market needs and Key critical factors. Through Agile companies can realize following benefits that include following (not an exhaustive list):
- Faster Speed to Market
- Improved Quality- High quality products with fewer defects
- Efficient and effective Solutions
- Reduced failed project risk
- Reduced over-budget
- Reduced missed project timelines
- Reduced waste and rework
- Improved and incremental return over investment(ROI)
- Early returns through early and frequent releases
- Reduced write-off risk
- Better stakeholder engagement
- Higher transparency
- Better focus & teamwork
- Happy Employees
- And many more…
AGILE Vs WATERFALL- Which One Suits Better? |TOP OF THE PAGE |
