Agile Development - Making it easy one step at a time

Have you ever come across the phrase "it is all in the smaller steps that add up to the bigger things?" Well, the same ideology can be applied to Agile Development. Rather than having a project go on for years, why not break it down into smaller releases, or "sprints"? In a sprint, projects are broken down into chunks of work or iterations, which can be worked on for short, repeatable phases or working cycles

Here's how agile development is going to help you improve your business agility.

Build your product consistently

While you may have already built your product prototype and gotten it up and running, what about the incremental changes that your product needs? How are you building that? Do you have a set methodology to incrementally add value over time?

That's where Agile Development can help you. Your business can use agile development for all the incremental changes your product requires. Agile is all about building incremental versions of your products that your customers will love.

Your Teams will be satisfied

 A healthy organization is one in which teams are satisfied with the work they've done and the influence they have throughout the product development cycle. In agile development, your teams will be involved in every step, right from planning, to executing and being involved in delivering the product. This leaves your teams satisfied that they are part of the process from start to end.

Find failures quickly and move on

 Going by the saying "Fail forward fast", while every project starts off with intentions to succeed, in reality, this often doesn't happen right away. Perhaps it’s not even the project, but an idea or feature that you’re working on implementing, and it’s just not adding the value you thought it would.

“Fail forward fast” embraces the idea that when this failure happens quickly, you can learn from it and move on. Since agile emphasizes working incrementally, you learn as you go and change as you need. The principles of Agile help teams develop a mindset to embrace change rather than reacting to it.

Market a product quickly

 Agile frameworks emphasize two ideologies, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and the Minimal Marketable Product (MMP).

The Minimum Viable Product tests an idea and provides a learning mechanism. Ideally, your business/team tends to release a prototype of the software early on. This will help you understand how the market reacts to it. It acts as a vehicle for testing your assumptions when it comes to your product prototype.

The Minimum Marketable Product acts as a fully functioning product with bare minimum features that users will require. Rather than spending months waiting to build and release a shippable product, you will be able to ship a product prototype quickly. This can also include the incremental changes that your clients require overtime.  

Remember that agile emphasizes the need for working in short iterations. Each iteration ends with a potentially shippable product, which helps teams be agile and thrive in an ever-changing business environment.

Increase stakeholder satisfaction

 For a single product, there is always a possibility that there are multiple stakeholders involved. Stakeholders are users, customers, or anyone that has a vested interest in the product. . In order to ensure that value is being added at every step, stakeholders' opinions are taken into consideration during iterations. By doing so, stakeholders feel like part of the entire process, from building right up to having a deliverable in hand, all in real-time.

Product Management Tip: Inviting stakeholders to your retrospective meetings would go a long way in building stakeholder engagement and inclusiveness. Keeping them in the loop throughout the stages of your product development cycle will make them feel invested in your success.

Agile can boost productivity and also save you money

With all of the above suggestions as to how agile development can help your business, there is no doubt that at every stage your business will be saving money. By adopting agile development, your business will be lowering risk, embracing change, speeding up time to market, and improving its agility. Your business will be saving a great deal of money, as at every step you will be building the right product rather than developing your product based on assumptions.

Your team will be at its productive peak with Agile Development. Your costs will be lower, and you will be building a product that emphasizes the ideal requirement, rather than building a product with extra fancy features or extravagant frills.

We hope you are convinced to switch to agile. Give it a shot with Zoho Sprints