The Benefits Of Agile Project Management For Financial Institutions

Agile project management offers advantages for financial institutions as competition from fintechs and regulatory pressures continue to challenge them. What are the possible benefits of agile for financial institutions? We look at some of the top challenges agile could help solve, including managing large teams.

The red tape of financial services

The financial sector’s critical role in our economy and everyday lives means it’s a heavily regulated industry. This means financial institutions often need to integrate compliance into their daily operations. Procedures, protocol, and standard operating procedures make up some of the red tape institutions have to deal with. Reporting and data submission requirements are another element of the red tape involved in running a financial institution.

As laws change, your organisation needs to keep up. The regulatory and compliance burden can also increase as your organisation expands and your customer base grows. For example, you might go from dealing with tens of thousands of accounts to dealing with millions of customer accounts. That means a lot more online data to keep secure, additional customer journeys to track and more accounts to audit and report on.

Red tape is seen as an encumbrance, but it could help protect your organisation, reduce risk, and ensure accountability across individuals, teams, and senior management. At the same time, over emphasising red tape could lead to bureaucratic approaches that constrain innovation and collaboration, which are critical for competitive advantage in an era of low credit growth. The key then is to have an effective way to manage red tape within your financial institution without compromising dynamism.

How ANZ uses agile working

Banking giant ANZ has turned away from hierarchies and bureaucracy to embrace agile teams, following the practice of technology businesses like Facebook and Google. Taking a Scrum approach, it’s drastically restructuring its former bureaucracy into “squads” of 10, and these teams in turn are grouped into “tribes.” The teams are led by coaches and product owners instead of managers.

As for other financial institutions adopting agile, Capital Finance group, Farm Credit Services of America, BNP Paribas, and Capital One are some of the overseas financial sector operators that have implemented agile with success.

How ANZ uses agile working

Learn how Amazon and Spotify used agile methodology to improve the way they work

The impact of agile project management in the finance industry

So as operators in a heavily regulated sector, financial institutions could trend towards bureaucratic structures and command-and-control ways of working. Together with strict reporting lines and centralised control, these could constrain innovation and collaboration. In contrast, agile practices offer a fast, flexible way of work that supports businesses in responding quickly to changing market conditions.

Agile covers a broad range of approaches and three common ones are Scrum, Lean, and Kanban.

For the financial industry, the scrum approach to project management can include daily stand-up meetings and strictly-timed project delivery sprints, for your large teams, and for projects over the long term. Instead of specialised departments and specialists, the focus might be on collaboration and on generalists with customer outcomes as goals. This could make your teams more dynamic and efficient.

Hierarchies are removed, although organisations will typically maintain divisions at the highest levels. Teams have more authority and accountability, which can seem at odds with heavily regulated and risk-conscious industries like the financial sector. The outcome could be higher customer satisfaction due to focusing on customer outcomes rather than hierarchical ways of working.

Want to become qualified in the world’s leading framework and certification for Agile Project Management? Sign up to our AgilePM® Foundation / Practitioner Combined course

Agile in IT departments

Another way agile approaches project management could be invaluable for financial institutions is in IT. As a significant consumer of IT resources, the financial sector is also facing the rising demand for mobile, online, and convenience banking. As a financial institution, you might be dealing with problems like ageing legacy infrastructure.

This might result in the need for an internal IT team that’s capable of patching, maintenance, and upgrades dynamically and responsively. Your financial software system might need to interface seamlessly with a number of peripheral systems and interfaces. So the challenges for your IT teams can be significant.

Agile project management could, again, provide the best alternative to traditional “waterfall” approaches. Waterfall development practices tend to be time – and resource-intensive, as opposed to the light, responsive IT teams you need to meet the demands of the digital age. Financial institutions can spend too much time on gathering project requirements and defining each requirement before the actual development stage. The whole process could take years, at which point technology and business processes might have changed.

Agile project management could reduce software defects, allow for shorter development times, and lead to higher customer satisfaction. It could help you avoid products, features, and systems becoming outdated before they’re even complete. Because of the rapid iteration process, you could integrate customer and/or user feedback into the development stage, allowing for a better product.

Become an agile project master

Financial institutions have traditionally trended towards hierarchy and bureaucracy. But in a highly competitive digital era, this might be a constraint to achieving dynamism and higher market share. Agile project management approaches could offer a fast, flexible way of structuring your organisation and its roles, allowing you to responding quickly to changing market conditions. These approaches could also led to better internal IT development processes.

ALC Training is the premier national provider of agile project management courses. Sign up to our AgilePM® Foundation / Practitioner Combined course and you to can master the framework of agile project management.

Why Government Contractors Need Agile Working Practices

Organisations that deal with government agencies are facing a new wave of challenges. Small and medium sized contractors are feeling the bulk of these new tensions, but many of the issues apply to contractors of all sizes.

Some of the current challenges facing contractors include:

Government agencies are tightening their belts

This means there are fewer projects going around, and contracting officers are often under-trained and overworked. This, coupled with the pressure to do more with less, is affecting officers’ ability to make the best decisions for a project.

Automation

A degree of automation is creeping into the tendering process, meaning that groups of potential bidders will be pre-qualified for tasks. For those outside the favoured pool, this makes the bidding process almost impossible.

Solutions, not purchases

Government is now less interested in making purchases than it is in looking for solutions. This means that bidders need to develop substantial “value add” capabilities and find staff with deep government-related skill sets to implement the solutions.

How does agile working help manage government projects?

Many of the challenges organisations face with regards to government contract projects can be resolved by adopting agile methodologies, particularly the Scrum approach.

The Scrum framework has been gaining a lot of steam in recent years thanks to the emphasis that it places on collaboration, iterative development and meeting evolving requirements over time.

4 advantages of using Scrum

1. Meeting evolving needs

What does this mean from a government perspective? In short, the Scrum methodology is compatible with the government push for solutions, rather than products. The iterative nature, and ability for Scrum projects to meet evolving requirements over time allows a government agency to take a broader approach to tenders.

Rather than offer a single technology-driven solution for a single problem, the contracts instead allow contractors to provide a degree of “future proofing” by designing a solution that can be scaled to the agency’s changing needs.

2. Win-win situation

This benefits the contractor, too, since it provides them with the potential for an ongoing project. Additionally, this form of project is a more effective way to ensure that the development and delivery of the project meets or exceeds the baseline expectations of the client.

In short, the client gets a more efficient service when the contracted agency is able to iterate on the product based on the unique needs of the client, as opposed to the submission of outputs that only meets the initial requirements.

Learn how Amazon and Spotify used agile methodology to improve the way they work

3. Better evaluation

Another important benefit of adopting the Scrum approach is that the development team will be afforded a better opportunity to properly evaluate the requirements of the government client, and establish a more accurate project schedule.

This is because Scrum projects are focused around the schedule of rollouts and iterations, rather than an attempt to finalise the project in a single instance and then provide an ongoing support contract afterwards.

Additionally, the iterative approach to development means that there’s a great deal of transparency between developers and the government agencies, and this in turn facilitates better communication and outcomes for the government client.

4. One size fits all

Another critical benefit gained with the Scrum methodology is that it is easily reusable across a wide range of government projects – mobile application development and websites right through to data transfer projects and audits. They can all be managed through a Scrum project management framework to improve the overall results of the project.

For the contractors, adjusting the approach to become Scrum-orientated couldn’t be easier. By becoming a certified Scrum Master, you will be armed with advanced knowledge and techniques to efficiently manage large-scale government projects under the Scrum banner.

Learn more about becoming a Professional Scrum Master

Arm yourself with Scrum knowledge with ALC Training

If your business works with government bodies, then meeting their evolving needs in an increasingly-complex and competitive space is important. Now is the time to adopt the Scrum methodology in your business. Contact the team at ALC Training to begin the training process.

Agile Project Management Solutions for Supply Chain Management

Running an agile supply chain is quickly becoming a necessity for modern businesses. It sounds simple on paper, but as most companies know, building agility into a supply chain doesn’t happen overnight. Here’s a look at some of the common challenges facing supply chain management, and how introducing an agile framework into the mix can provide simple solutions to complex problems.

Common challenges facing supply chain management

Despite how important, integrated and efficient supply chain management is, there are many challenges that businesses still face in today’s landscape. These key challenges can be broken down into the following.

Customer demands

Customers want their products quicker and at a better price. But keeping up with this demand isn’t always financially or logistically realistic for companies.

Globalisation

Due to the growing customer demands, companies are often forced to outsource to countries where their products can be produced at a cheaper cost. But this can complicate the supply chain and lengthen delivery times, and as companies become more global there’s an increasing pressure to adapt products to suit local markets.

Fast-changing market growth

Increasing your customer base to grow your business can be tricky. You have to keep up with trends, consistently innovate and create new products, and update features on existing products. What’s more, these products need to be of the highest quality, which often goes hand-in-hand with compliance. This means you need to constantly keep on top of trading and government policies, fees, and regulatory standards in the industry.

Cyber risks

As the supply chain becomes more connected and digitised, cyber risks begin to present themselves. Keeping a supply chain secure is a growing issue as cyber threats can come from anywhere, whether it’s in emails, attachments, or even public Wi-Fi.

Take our cybersecurity quiz to see how your knowledge stacks up  

How agile supply chain management works

As consumer buying patterns rapidly change, supply chain management needs to change as well. The fact is, businesses need to be ready for this if they want to remain competitive. One method of doing so is through implementing agile working practices to improve customer satisfaction, project control and product quality and manage your supply chain

What is an agile supply chain?

The main drivers of an agile supply chain are speed, cost and delivery. Essentially, an agile supply chain is based on the increasingly sensitive demands of the consumer. It uses responsiveness, competency, flexibility and speed to better manage how well it works on a day-to-day basis, which is done using real-time data and information.

What are the benefits of an agile supply chain?

Perhaps most importantly, an agile supply chain helps businesses better respond to volatile markets and unpredictability. They’re built to be flexible, which means they can adapt to changes in the economy, changes in technology and changes in customer demands.

To break it down further, here’s what an agile supply chain can help with:

Want to become qualified in the world’s leading framework and certification for Agile Project Management? Sign up to our AgilePM® Foundation / Practitioner Combined course

 

4 tips for building agile supply chain management

  1. Create an agile team

Building an agile team within supply chain management can help your business create products or services that better align with the needs of your customers. You’ll ideally need a group of multi-disciplinary employees who can not only create quickly, but also test and redevelop quickly.

  1. Reward wins (and failures)

Experimentation is crucial in agile working methods. In many companies, to fail means to risk your career. But for a company that encourages agility in their supply chain management, failure should be seen as constructive.

Building agile supply management means encouraging teams not to fear failure, but to learn from mistakes, move on and focus on the bigger picture. So don’t just reward wins – reward failures too.

  1. Be agile with supplier contracts

To meet the changing needs of the market, consider creating more flexible supplier contracts – for example buy-back contracts and zero-volume contracts. To harness the potential of the blockchain, which enables the use of bitcoin, you could also consider creating “smart contracts”.

It’s also important to promote the flow of information with suppliers and develop collaborative relationships with them. For example, you can create an e-hub that connects your company with the supplier via the internet.

  1. Be more aware

There are a few ways to boost your supply chain awareness, which might include:

Being aware also means being prepared. According to Hau L. Lee, it’s also important to draw up contingency plans and put together a team that knows how to put them into action.

Learn how Amazon and Spotify used agile methodology to improve the way they work

Don’t work hard, work agile

Often the best way to implement agility into supply chain management is to have someone show you the ropes. This means mastering an agile framework such as Scrum.

At ALC Training,we have two outstanding courses to teach you how to optimise value, reduce total cost of ownership, deliver more frequently, and improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of your business.

Check these out:

Our industry-leading AgilePM Agile Project Management course

Our cutting-edge PSM (Professional Scrum Master) course

What is Scaled Agile Framework?

Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe for short, is a large interactive knowledge-base of best practices, case studies, courses and toolkits. The patterns and resources are proven, backed up by numerous case studies. It is specifically designed to work for both small businesses and multi-billion dollar corporate giants. How does it do that?

Well there are a number of components that allow the method to scale. This includes a list of the key principles, outlined above, but also used the concept of Agile Release Trains. These are teams of teams, containing all your resources, including suppliers and partners, that are co-ordinated through program increment (PI) planning. These planning sessions ensure all the trains are moving in the same direction and that all the work is decomposed into features and stories. This results in working code shortly after the first sprint.

The framework itself comes in four flavours:

  1. Essential SAFe
  2. Portfolio SAFe
  3. Large Solution SAFe
  4. Full Safe

The order and selection of the above configurations is highly dependent on the organisation’s vision, commitment and maturity to adopting Agile.  Below are all the frameworks for comparison.

1. Essential SAFe

 

2. Portfolio SAFe

 

3. Large Solution SAFe

 

4. Full SAFe

Still not convinced…..well there are a wealth of case studies on the SAFe site.

Below is are a few of my favourites:

Want to know more about how to use SAFe? 

Please check out my Leading SAFe 2 Day Course. Please let myself or ALC Training know when and where we can run this course for your organisation.

How Amazon and Spotify Used Scrum to Change How They Work

Amazon and Spotify are two market leaders known for their dynamism and technological know-how. In this Scrum case study, we’ll analyse how their approach to agile working improved the way they work and how this can be instructive for other organisations seeking to adopt agile practices.

How Amazon use Scrum in the workplace

Amazon, which has opened several warehouses in Australia, has long been using Scrum in its work practices. Since 1999, the company has been using agile practices for managing its employees.

In the years ranging between 2004 and 2009, Scrum became widely adopted in its development organisations. Amazon’s adoption strategy has been described as an unplanned and decentralised transformation that’s different from the way Scrum adoption usually takes place.

6 ways Amazon uses the Scrum methodology:

  1. Permission
    Amazon’s teams were given broad discretion to solve their own problems without detailed prescriptive practices from a central authority. The decentralised decision-making discretion is designed to let teams create, deliver, and operate high-quality software in a streamlined and red-tape-free way.

  2. Teams
    Stable and long-lived teams support agile practices. Development teams have one manager to whom they report to directly. These standard Amazon team policies make the culture and work arrangement consistent with Scrum practices.

  3. Knowledge
    The spark was lit through team members who were happy to help educate others about Scrum on an ad hoc and voluntary basis. Once they were educated in the practices, individual teams were able to make ground-level decisions about how to implement it. The results these teams achieved drove other teams to become interested.

  4. Scale capacity
    Amazon switched from dedicated servers to AWS and removed the siloed approach from their operations and development teams. This means their developers can deploy individual codes to any of their servers at their disposal, allowing the business to move and innovate faster. Engineers can scale up or down their capacity without restrictions.

  5. Better software
    Adopting Agile has allowed Amazon to deliver better software and save considerably on costs. An average of their 40% of dedicated-servers capacity ended up going to waste. Shifting to Agile practices have seen their engineers deploy a code every 12 seconds, accompanied by a drop in the volume and duration of outages.

  6. Impetus
    With ad hoc, voluntary Scrum education; an email-based Scrum community; and occasional Scrum master training sessions, a critical mass of teams had adopted the winning practice. Following this, a Scrum trainer/coach position was created, and having a full-time trainer on board meant easier adoption and high-quality agile working implementations.

Scrum implementation happened from the ground-level up at Amazon. No timelines or mandates were used. It didn’t start with management-level decisions and prescriptive plans for adoption.

By encouraging Scrum through fostering a culture of innovation and ensuring information about it is available, organisations can drive adoption by responding to demand and removing impediments as they’re discovered. Allowing stable, long-term teams to exist and giving teams plenty of discretion about how they would adopt went a long way to make this approach to agile working successful.

How Spotify use Scrum in the workplace

How Spotify Uses Agile

For a contrasting approach, Spotify provides a suitable case study. Unlike Google’s “grassroots” strategy, the digital music service had a  systematic approach to adopting Scrum. Spotify’s approach has some similarities with Google’s, but its key tenet is living and breathing Scrum as a development methodology. The Scrum masters at Spotify are required to be experienced agile coaches, and many of the company’s Scrum masters are leading agile trainers.

In addition to complete management buy-in, Spotify uses small teams that, like Google’s Scrum teams, are totally independent. These “squads” are treated like individual startups. They’re allowed to be fully autonomous and work independently to focus on assigned, specific functions within Spotify’s product.

These autonomous teams are organised into  larger units of tribes and loosely structured into chapters and guilds to drive stronger knowledge sharing between teams. Spotify’s team approach seems to balance team independence with knowledge-sharing between specialist groups that don’t engage in daily collaboration. At the same time, Spotify is avoiding scaling issues by decoupling where possible.

This approach allows the business to quickly develop and deliver software updates. An additional benefit of these small, autonomous teams is they can make changes and deliver upgrades without interfering the other teams’ work. These squads or teams completely own their pieces of product, so they can deploy, change, and upgrade that piece without interrupting anything else. 

A rapid removal of roadblocks is also key to Spotify’s successful adoption of Scrum. Spotify makes it a priority to deal with roadblocks and issues as soon as they arise, and does so by constantly monitoring possible impediments and eliminating them before they turn into issues. This allows their teams to move rapidly to achieve goals and scale-up.

What you can learn from Amazon and Spotify’s Agile project management

Amazon and Spotify have very different approaches as far as the adoption of Scrum is concerned. In the case of Amazon, the organisation allowed adoption to happen incrementally and at the ground level, as demand drove it. In the case of Spotify, it was a deliberate, management-sanctioned plan that led to Scrum implementation.

However, the two businesses are similar in how they use the process. Scrum is used in order to allow teams to be autonomous and self-directing. Spotify’s approach allows them to emphasise autonomous and discrete teams that work separately from others. Amazon’s use of Scrum is focused on long-term, stable teams.

In addition, Amazon’s practice focuses on sharing knowledge and driving better understanding through resources like training, email-based communities, and expert coaches. For Spotify, the removal of roadblocks is vital for rapid responses, product iterations, and scaling up.

How Scrum innovates the way you work

ALC Training - How Scrum innovates the way you work3

Scrum rethinks the traditional hierarchical management ideology by suggesting a flatter, more empowering working structure is better. This type of organisation can be superior because it can enable you to leverage the skills of individuals and teams while responding more dynamically and being more innovative.

Scrum teams can include a product owner, a development team, and a Scrum master. Instead of the team taking instructions from a senior manager, the Scrum team is usually self-organising and cross-functional.

This means the team chooses how they will do their work. Since they’re cross-functional, Scrum teams don’t need to work with other teams and can act dynamically to achieve goals without waiting for others.

Since products are designed in an iterative and incremental way, teams have a lot of opportunities to test, take feedback into account, and engage in continuous improvement. The development team are by design small enough to stay dynamic but sizeable enough to deal with the workloads required for sprints.

Sprints are another core element of Scrum, and they’re a time-box of four weeks or less during when a useable and possibly releasable version of a product is produced. Sprints can result in a final product or be used to produce product increments rapidly.

Why the role of Scrum Master is pivotal for agile working

Scrum masters play a pivotal role in any Scrum environment. They are responsible for ensuring teammates understand the goals of the agile method. The Scrum master helps team members achieve this by sharing their knowledge of Scrum theory, practices, and rules.

A secondary role of the Scrum Master is to help others outside of the team understand the usefulness of their interactions of with team members. This allows outsiders, who are within the organisation, adapt their interactions to best support the Scrum team members.

The Scrum Master is also responsible for removing impediments to the team’s progress, and they may play a significant role in the organisation by coaching and leading the organisation in Scrum adoption.

Ready to become a Scrum Master and enhance the way you work? 

If you’re keen to take the next step to improve how your team works, sign up to our Professional Scrum Master course. Presented by Erwin van der Koogh, one of the most experienced Scrum Master trainers in the Asia-Pacific region, this course is the world premium certification for anyone wanting to master Scrum. 

5 Everyday Management Problems Solved by Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management (AgilePM) offers a practical methodology for ensuring your teamwork rapidly and flexibly to deliver client requirements. From product quality and customer satisfaction to project ROI, control, and risk, you as the project manager need to be able to manage everyday challenges effectively. So how does agile help you address these issues?

1. Ensuring high product quality

The agile methodology is focused on testing, which is integrated into the cycle. Your team has numerous chances to inspect and correct designs or product iterations during the development cycle.

The just-in-time approach keeps product features relevant while allowing you a chance to ensure it’s as high quality as possible. Issues are kept fresh by the just-in-time iterative method, so your team can work dynamically to correct and improve while the concepts are still fresh in mind.

Agile emphasises automated testing tools, and this can also speed up iterations and give you more chances to refine product quality. Focusing on incremental changes and improvements allow you to work improvements into the design, test as you go, and avoid perfection paralysis. The flexibility to change lends itself well to continuous improvement, facilitating a high-quality-product outcome.

2. Greater customer satisfaction

Meeting customer satisfaction is a constant challenge for businesses. Agile development and project management methods help managers address this core value.

One way to improve customer satisfaction is taking advantage of the quick feedback available through agile methodologies. By integrating customer feedback into each product iteration or throughout the production and/or delivery process, you can refine the product rapidly to deliver a product closely matching their requirements.

Client engagement is another avenue for improving satisfaction. Active participation of customers throughout the project, through collaboration and communication, can boost satisfaction. Combined with the flexibility to change, regular sprint reviews, and rapid iteration, you’re more likely to end up with a product that reaches the market in a shorter timeframe. This, in turn, can also increase client satisfaction.

3. Increased project control

Project managers balancing competing priorities and multiple moving parts can find it challenging to retain control throughout the project. However, by using agile and avoiding the traditional waterfall management techniques, you can end up with increased project control.

This can happen through the smaller, focused groups, which you as the project manager can guide more effectively with regular meetings, specific goals, and rapid changes. Using Scrum (a type of agile working framework) tools like time-boxes and roles, for example, could let you retain more control over your project and team. Sprint meetings and greater transparency are other possible ways for retaining greater control over projects.

Project cost control is another important element, and agile project management can help project managers retain control over this aspect through dynamism. This could happen by allowing you to make new changes quickly, with little costs. For example, the rapid-iteration model lets you develop, refine, and test new products incrementally, which is likely to be more cost-effective than large-scale, longer-cycle development models.

4. Taking less risk on projects

Since agile project management techniques focus on rapid iteration and incremental improvements, there’s a lower chance of absolute project failure. Project managers are effectively dealing with less risk because they usually start with a working product as they sprint quickly from one iteration to the next. Using Scrum planning, for example, will allow you to manage costs and time to completion more effectively, to reduce the risk of falling behind and excessive project costs.

Rapid improvements shorten the timeframe it takes to finalise the product, and integrating client feedback into the process also helps ensure the final product is on point. The shorter timeframe to completion reduces budgetary requirements and minimises cost-blowout risks, a major concern of project managers. Client rejection or contract breach is less likely because of the incremental changes and client collaboration.

5. Agile Project Management results in faster ROI

AgilePM is associated with quicker time to market and higher productivity. Both of these allow your business to realise faster and higher ROI. Rapid iteration, incremental changes, and flexibility to change allow agile projects to reach the final product more quickly.

For businesses, this can shorten the time to obtaining ROI, allowing you to generate more cash flow and from rapid ready-to-market product development cycles. Rather than the long delivery cycles associated with businesses, you can start selling much more quickly.

Refining products quickly and reaching the ready-to-sell stage earlier means you can release products faster, respond to changing marketing conditions, and leverage first-mover advantage. You can take advantage of niches and new gaps in the marketplace to increase your ROI before competitors move in.

AgilePM – with Scrum methodology being a notable type of management methodology – can provide project managers with practical tools to manage simple to complex teams. By applying agile techniques, you can successfully guide your team to achieve faster ROI while improving client satisfaction and product quality.

Sign up to our agile training course

ALC Training is an accredited provider of AgilePM® training, the world’s leading framework and certification for agile project management. Whether you’re an experienced project manager or starting out in the field, our courses can assist you with in-depth knowledge on applying agile techniques. Contact us today for more information.

6 Reasons Why Teams Are Using Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management is currently in vogue throughout the tech sector, but it’s more than a passing trend. Agile forms a framework that allows iterative, substantive collaborations to be made in an efficient manner for an entire workforce.

It’s a step up in speed, quality control, and customer satisfaction from waterfall management; the increases in speed are checked by increased collaboration, increased focus on small systems, and review/feedback cycles, allowing for a more robust and speedy end product.

If you haven’t already made the switch, you’re missing out on a lot of simple, effective changes. Here are six of them.

1. Small focus makes light work

One of the key differences of the Agile framework is that development is compounded into small “sprints”, which focus on one small part of a product within small teams and strive to make that part completely functional before moving onto the next one.

This gives a definite advantage of fully completing each system in a line, like a factory floor. By splitting up work this way, teams never have to wait around for others in the line to finish up parts to give to their team or experience the nightmare of complex interlocking parts (none of which are fully completed).

2. Product stability is massively increased

As Agile is so focused towards workable parts, the core systems of a product will always be functional well ahead of time and are designed to function independently of each other to allow changes further down the track.

During a sprint, you’ll be easily able to see how robust each system is, whether its functionality won’t work in the current iteration, and be able to easily pinpoint faults and impossibilities early on in the timeline. Even in a situation where the product is found to be unstable and scuttled, you’ll have numerous completed projects that can slot into another model.

Testing is an inherent part of iterative design, which saves time, energy, and money; quality assessments are done during the design period rather than bundled into the end.

3. Iterative betas = market-leading

Agile development means shaping a product while it evolves. Oftentimes, this can mean shipping a product that lacks all of its 1.0 functionality but is instead in a purchasable beta form that is continually added to over time.

Statistics show that roughly 80% of market leaders launched their product before any competitors in the field. There are examples where an inefficient product is overtaken by a savvy competitor, but this only account for 20% of overall success stories.

Putting out a product in an agile framework means getting eyes on it immediately and continually through its lifecycle. From a marketing perspective, it’s invaluable to have the ability to continually pump out content, updates, and generate positive press. This means that a quality product will not only speak for itself but that it’ll keep talking every new release.

Want to become qualified in the world’s leading framework and certification for Agile Project Management? Sign up to our AgilePM® Foundation / Practitioner Combined course

4. Flexibility

Agile management systems know that briefs, context, situations, and even a client’s mind can change on a whim or due to external factors.

Due to this, prioritisation of core concepts, and the emergence of new higher priorities doesn’t shake the core of the development cycle as it would in a waterfall solution. As circumstances change, the focus is merely diverted towards the emergent systems and away from systems that will invariably be shipped at a later date.

Of course, this requires strong top-down management; luckily, this is easier to achieve than in a waterfall system.

5. Visibility is easy in Agile

Regular checks, testing, and small bite-sized chunks mean that progress and insight are amazingly simple to achieve. All employees, managers, and stakeholders have easily digestible reports into the current standing of the project.

Metrics are simplified, reports are easy to create and translate from the tech floor to boardroom, and leadership can easily see precisely what needs to flow into what.

You’ll need leaders who are comfortable working in this environment (which is why qualification courses exist in the first place), but the benefits far outweigh the initial startup cost.

6. Better forward projections

It all comes down to data, and having access to so many iterative reports allows you to have a perfect understanding of precisely how far along with development you currently are; this is true both in the sense of having a fixed development endpoint and in the sheer ease of visibility as a project lead.

Both of these translate into a better understanding and projection for the future. Having a concise end of development stops the endless pushbacks, and therefore uncertainty, of Development Hell. Anything not ready to go at the exact moment of project completion merely shifts focus towards the highest priority for subsequent iterations. Oftentimes, the gap between project end and shipping will allow for additional progress to be made on these core systems regardless.