During the course of the last two decades, innovative and systematic methodologies has been designed, tested, and implemented on large scale globally. These diverse methodologies fall under the general banner of Agile.

The rising popularity Agile was recently confirmed in a Benchmark Report from a survey carried out on 2,000 project managers. 25% of the respondents in 2015 showed that they employed Agile techniques and methods in their daily roles, with 60% indicating they have had some degree of exposure to Agile, while just15% had zero exposure. The figure amounts to a 10% rise from the response obtained 12 months previously by UK-based practitioners.

What are the Benefits of Agile?

Agile is ideally not a methodology, process or framework. Rather, it may be thought of as an umbrella covering a broad range of frameworks and methodologies, all built upon a fundamental set of principles and value statements (such as the Agile Manifesto). These core values are the ones that constitute the fundamental Agile tenets and also function as the foundation for all the frameworks and methodologies that label themselves in a similar manner.

Depending on the way you look at it, you are going to find lists of benefits provided through the adoption of Agile principles/values. The majority of experts concur on the following:

• Faster Return-On-Investment and increased business value
• Lower development costs and improved visibility
• Adaptability or greater ability in terms of responding to changes
• Decreased solution delivery risk

Reasons for the Growing Popularity of Agile

Agile frameworks and methods continue to take the world of project management by storm.
What are the factors behind this growing popularity?

1. Quality Assurance:

A key agile development principle is that testing has been integrated into the entire lifecycle making it possible to regularly inspect the product as it is being developed. This makes it possible for the product owner to implement necessary adjustments and also alert the product team early enough in case of quality issues.

2. Agility/Flexibility:

Through placing the end-user first, the methodology of Agile has swept away preventable project bureaucracy, getting straight to the core of what actually matters: such as how the software is going to work in practice for those actually utilising it. Unlike the conventional and typical approaches, the methodology of agile accords IT projects the needed flexibility towards responding at all software development stages, to end-user interaction, through involving them right from the start.

3. Revenue and Speed-to-Market:

The Agile development interactive nature implies that new features are getting delivered in an incremental manner, enabling several benefits to be realised early on as the product development continues.

Research has indicated that nearly 80% of all market leaders in the market were the first to take the plunge. Besides the higher revenue due to incremental delivery, the philosophy of Agile development also supports the concept of ‘perpetual beta’, and regular, and early releases.

4. Reduced Waste:

Today, organisations are so occupied with risk mitigation (more than with innovation) such that that costs cutting appears as the only survival path. While cutting down waste will for sure assist in costs control, investing in credible continuous improvement is going to be a long commitment that requires patience and capital.

5. Increased Speed :

Through working towards delivering on a basis that is more iterative, Agile is assisting organisations bring to the market new features faster than experienced before. The reduced scale of interactions is promoting quicker feedback cycles, effectively assisting in steering the Agile team in the market pull direction.

6. Improved Confidence, Trust and Safety:

Agile adoption improves an organisation’s confidence, making it less complicated for the product to pivot, allowing better reaction to market conditions changes. People prefer being able to fail and learn, rather than get clobbered with sticks anytime they stumble or get it wrong. The approach of Agile towards failure, that lays more stress on blameless post-mortems while adopting an attitude of problem-solving towards failures, aids in boosting team members’ trust, leading to improved confidence.

7. Higher Levels of Engagement and Customer Satisfaction:

The active engagement of the product owner and the user representative, the high product and progress visibility, and the clear flexibility to change whenever it is required generates much better customer satisfaction and business engagement. This is a vital benefit that creates more enduring and positive working relationships.

Conclusion:

Agile is more than a management processes. It constitutes altogether a different ideology. Different from the traditional vertical management control ideology, Agile reflects a horizontal enablement ideology.

The goal is creating work spaces that are in a position of drawing on the maximum capabilities and talents of those performing the work of delivering more value to the customer, while at the same time systematically eliminating any impediments. This is a good fit ideology in a business environment that demands continuous innovation if success is to be realized.