5 Benefits of Agile software development
In a rapidly changing world, every enterprise wants to keep up with the times and nanotechnology. It is possible if the period from product ideation to its release is extremely short. How do you achieve this? Agile methodology offers an engineering team a clear direction. It helps organize work so that employees are happy, influence processes, and are involved in active interaction. Why are enterprises choosing the Agile software development model, and what benefits does it bring to a company?
Agile in a nutshell
Agile is a culture with certain values that facilitate a team’s work and increase its efficiency. For IT professionals, Agile also means an iterative approach to project management and software creation that helps businesses build products faster and error-free.
There are no instructions in the Agile philosophy. Its 12 principles and 4 values are mentioned in The Agile Manifesto and The Scrum Guide.
Teams build their work considering that:
- People and human interaction are more valuable than processes and tools.
- Cooperation and efficient communication with a client is above contract negotiations.
- A functional product weighs more than exhaustive documentation.
- Reacting to changes precedes sticking to the original plan.
Flexible ways of organizing project work are based on Agile. These are Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, and so on. These are frameworks that describe the development mindset to achieve a goal.
What does the Agile software lifecycle look like compared to the Waterfall methodology?
The SDLC in Agile and classic models has the same stages:
- data collection and analysis;
- architectural design;
- development;
- implementation;
- testing;
- system deployment.
But Agile and Waterfall differ in the sequence of their implementation.
In Waterfall, these phases cascade into each other. A new stage starts only after the previous one is over.
The PM dedicates plenty of time to:
- thinking over the development stages;
- defining functions;
- assigning tasks;
- allocating resources;
- agreeing on a work plan.
The development is planned in detail from the very beginning, so Waterfall prohibits changes. It often happens that by the moment a solution is released, it loses market relevance and value, which is the biggest drawback. But this model is well suited for small projects with stable requirements, tools, and technologies.
Agile is completely different. This model must respond to market changes and accelerate software development. Here, work is divided into iterations during which professionals implement certain features. An increment goes through all phases. A small working product is built to see how it fits the market and whether the idea will find its audience. If people are interested in new software, the team continues to develop it. In the next iteration, the process is repeated for a new increment.
Scrum is based on regular sprints (weekly or monthly), during which IT professionals complete the planned scope of tasks and achieve the set goal. The product owner gives out important tasks. The Scrum Master oversees the processes and team performance. They undertake supervision of participants so that everyone understands the amount of work. This specialist also solves material and technical issues (if the members have enough of the necessary equipment, knowledge, competencies, etc.).
The team coordinates tasks with the sprint goal and estimates them in hours or points. Specialists calculate whether they will have time to implement them in the sprint. If not, they change the sprint goal and transfer part of the tasks to the next one.
Work progress is recorded at daily meetings, and the outcomes are summed up at the final one. The purpose of a Daily Meeting is to see if each member knows about the tasks of others and make sure no one has problems completing tasks. Should there be any difficulties, an additional meeting of the employee with a narrow specialist is scheduled, at which they resolve the issue together. So, there should not be situations when a person is abandoned and helpless at carrying out a difficult task.
In the demo, the team demonstrates the results of the work to the product owner and investors. They explain whether the sprint goal was achieved or not and why. At the retrospective, colleagues discuss how they worked: what was carried out successfully and what was not very good. They agree on a plan to fix imperfections in the next sprint.
Participants of a sprint are result-oriented. The team is flexible with process and requirement changes, so they release a working product that finds its target audience and is relevant to the business. They can introduce tasks that were not included in the original sprint plan. Changes are planned only in the next development stage.
In Kanban, backlog tasks are distributed among team members in order of priority. Thus, PMs see who is overloaded and who has little work to do and can adjust the development flow and team size. The main feature is workflow visualization on the Kanban board.
The product owner creates tasks in the product backlog and sets priorities. The PM takes them and distributes them among the staff. As soon as one is over, the next one is taken from the backlog. Tasks can be changed daily, so the methodology works well for running projects. According to Kanban, it is convenient to implement new functionality in existing software.
Flexible frameworks help to effectively manage a project when requirements are not fully known at the start, when they change during work, and when it is necessary to change the already made functionality. Methodologies prevent changes from software project rescue and lead it to successful outcomes.
Structure of an Agile team
The choice of Agile team roles depends on the framework. The Agile philosophy itself does not assign specific roles to specialists. It only recommends valuing people and interaction above processes and tools. However, there are some duties that only specific team members can perform, as this will be most effective.
Scrum suggests the following role distribution:
- The product owner is a representative of the customer. This person conveys the needs of the business to IT specialists. They understand what the software solution should look like, who its target audience is, how much money the software should bring in, in which countries it will work, etc. They draw the attention of the team to these points and manage the product backlog and releases.
- A Scrum Master receives instructions from the product owner and takes part in the planning and analysis of sprints. This specialist supports developers, facilitates meetups, and holds general meetings. They monitor compliance with the Scrum ceremony and timing so that the work is as productive as possible.
- A development team consists of Business Analysts, designers, programmers, QA specialists, DevOps engineers, and others. Its composition and size are determined by the complexity and duration of an Agile software development project.
There are no project roles in Kanban. The board belongs to the whole team, which is collectively responsible for the project implementation. If the specialists ensure the uninterrupted delivery of new functionality, this indicates the success of a Kanban project.
In other Agile software development models, project roles may differ. But this does not prevent IT professionals from creating high-quality software and releasing it on time and in full.
Why are companies going Agile
Statistics show that Agile and DevOps are becoming mainstream software development models. In 2021, these methods were used by 31.8% and 35.9% of firms, respectively. 13% practiced Kanban, and 5% combined Waterfall and Scrum. According to Duplocloud, a healthy internal development platform can boost your deployment speed by almost 50%.
These figures tell us that enterprises are opting for a predominantly Agile software development methodology that provides products with speed to market, security, and code quality.
Benefits of Agile software development:
1. Regular feedback
The division into sprints is convenient as IT professionals can evaluate the outcomes and present a new version of the product to the client. The latter also participates in the creation of the product by analyzing the work done, studying customer feedback, and suggesting changes that should be included in the next sprint. Regular feedback helps to make the product better.
2. Fast software delivery to the market
According to McKinsey, Agile transformation reduces time to market by at least 40%. Agile software development sprints last 1-4 weeks. For businesses, this means that new program features are delivered more frequently. Users regularly receive value-updated working software. Clients are happy because the program fully satisfies their needs.
3. Clear risk management
Each sprint has a fixed duration. This makes it easier for the team to monitor the progress of tasks and deal with emerging risks. For example, Scrum uses sprint logs and delivery schedules, so it’s easier for managers to predict results.
The creators of the Standish Group 2018 Chaos Report claim that Agile projects are 60% more likely to succeed than classical ones. Indeed, for classical methodologies, any changes are a risk. The nature of Agile is such that it does not allow modifications to destroy the project.
4. Cost reduction
60% of businesses report profit growth after moving to Agile. In some cases, the benefit is 20-30%.
Income is growing because:
- Companies save money because they do not need to rebuild software and deal with the risks of an outdated product once it is released.
- A company spends less time on project planning.
- A program enters the market on time and in proper quality.
- The team is more productive because specialists see the volume of tasks planned for the sprint and discuss emerging issues at daily meetings.
- With Agile, companies improve customer experience by 30%. And this means that consumers will not go to a competitor and recommend the software to their friends. The target audience is growing, and so is the revenue.
5. Product quality improvement
Testing is crucial for an Agile project. It is carried out in every sprint/iteration. This regularity allows teams to quickly find defects and fix them before a new version is released. User acceptance testing helps to see the reaction of customers to the program and find out what needs to be improved to enhance the user experience. Constant interaction with the audience helps to create the most useful and high-quality product.
Agile is a powerful software development tool. It is useful not only for an IT service provider but also for the customer. Development teams create quality software without unnecessary costs and time delays. The business benefits from speed and quality through savings and revenue growth.
Conclusion
Agile looks different everywhere. Constant feedback and quick adaptation to changes is a feature that unites Agile software development models. Agile promises faster time to market, improved performance, fewer defects, cost savings, and employee engagement. Organizations that adopt Agile accelerate business growth by up to 38%.
An experienced software development partner can help you get your Agile project going. You can choose different models of cooperation: team building, product design services, or IT outsourcing services. Such IT providers successfully build custom mobile app projects or web platforms. Experts will create state-of-the-art software for fintech, healthcare, logistics, and other industries.
