Agile product development is very important for IT companies, teams, and organizations. If you are working on SCRUM or XP project, this article will help you understand how business benefits from Agile.
Agile Product Development Is Less Risky.
The risk in any project is always there, even if you are using a traditional approach or methodologies like a waterfall to build products. Because the main idea of every development process has the same concept that building something requires careful planning, design, feedback, and refinement before reaching the final version, otherwise it will be too costly to change anything when you are in the middle or end your development cycle. That’s why waterfall processes say for documenting requirements upfront to avoid surprises during the development process. However, in this way, product owner loses their ability to adapt to requirement changes quickly because it takes time for feedback and documentation cycles. The other option is not doing requirements documentation right away but instead starting developing software while collecting requirements, which is the riskier way.
Collaboration Between Stakeholders And Developers Is Encouraged
Agile methodologies encourage collaboration across the whole organization, including customers, product owners, development teams, and management. There are no roles like manager or developer in Agile teams. Instead, there is a scrum master who understands both business requirements and development processes. Also, scrum master ensures that all stakeholders understand their responsibilities to avoid conflict during the project cycle. Because of this approach, everyone involved with the project feels more responsible about their role to ensure the successful delivery of the final software product. This means you can get early feedback about your software even before it’s ready for release, so you can address them early without additional costs or rework later.
Reports Show The Progress Of Agile Projects More Clearly
One of the most important things in traditional waterfall methodologies is reporting progress. Because you are not able to show the progress result until the software is ready for release, even if you can see some issues during development or testing that prevent it from releasing on time, however in agile projects like scrum, you will see the reports with sprint goal and actual results so the product owner can be aware of how it’s going. This makes it easy for everyone involved with the project to understand where they are in the development cycle and what is coming next in their path. You can plan early with accurate information instead of guessing things during development phases which also causes more risk by wasting time and resources without knowing the exact result.
In conclusion, the Agile Product Development process may be a little more expensive in the early phases, but it is worth paying that effort because Agile methodologies produce better results with less risk. As a result, your company can save time and resources while delivering great software products for clients or customers. Nowadays IT market is very competitive, so it’s good to be agile in your development teams to stay on top of your competitors.