5 Reasons to Use Agile Software Development

In the last decade, the adoption of Agile software development has increased significantly.

Agile software development utilizes short development cycles, known as sprints, which are incorporated and adopted based on customer and stakeholder feedback to create a high-quality product. Agile software development is popular mainly due to the quick-paced nature of business lately.

With its emphasis on continued collaboration and evolution, Agile helps businesses by addressing rapid-to-market deadlines, high stakeholder engagement, shifting priorities, and a need for flexibility.

Instead of spending several months building a web application or mobile app that may be outdated after it is introduced to market, an organization using Agile software development could release the first application iteration in less than two weeks. Next, they will continue to release adaptive and updated versions in the next six months, creating a useful, relevant, and effective final deliverable.

5 Reasons to Use Agile

There are a wide range of benefits of using Agile software development. It empowers teams to manage work efficiently and effectively while providing best quality applications at a low budget. Agile teams coordinate as a unit and react well to the inevitable revisions that resurface in most projects.

1. Minimizes Technical Debt

Technical debt is the maintenance tasks needed to support the current application. These tasks include resolving defects, refactoring, and agile testing. In a conventional software development environment, this technical debt can grow in no time as the team prioritizes on new feature development to maintain pace for the project timeline.

Agile software development process ensures technical debt is kept to a minimum. Any features changes, defects or maintenance tasks are added to a product backlog. The team analyzes backlog in sprint planning sessions to decide what to fix next. Therefore, each sprint is a new opportunity to repair defects with new feature development.

2. Increases Transparency

Agile software development provides a unique opportunity to clients to participate throughout the project lifecycle via iterative planning, review sessions, and software builds. At this point, the client has to show some flexibility as well.

Without a visible process, it can be tricky to adjust with the latest changes and measure KPIs. Agile adds transparency to the workflow, enabling you to detect workflow issues, unite your team, bring them on the same page, and deal with changes with a higher success level.

For instance, you can add Kanban board to add more transparency to your project’s lifecycle. It divides your larger initiatives into cards (sub-tasks), splits your work process into various phases, builds independent workflows, generate explicit policies, and offers a perspective detailing the contribution of team members in various tasks.

3. Measure Relevant Metrics

Agile produces precise and useful metrics that improve project planning and performance evaluation. Traditionally, metrics were used to monitor the project against cost and schedule only. This approach overlooked efficiency.

On the other hand, Agile opens up access to tools that determine efficiency and prioritize performance optimizing, creating positive results and leading to data-driven decision-making.

For instance, when you measure how your term is performing or when you optimize the work process, Agile lends the following metrics to make your job easy:

• Aging Work in Progress – It shows your work in progress changes in a specific period, particularly where it slows down and picks up pace for a specific activity.
• Cycle Time – It displays how much time the team spent on a certain work item.
• Lead Time – It evaluates the time spent in processing one work item from the initial customer request to the eventual delivery.
• Throughput – It measures how productive your team is, including the finished work at any stage.

4. Incorporates Feedback Quickly

The modifications made in the project are implemented easily when Agile is being used. They are added after giving feedback to the software developers. Regardless of how quick an application is deployed, as long as it fails to meet the SRS document, your hard work will be wasted.

You have to see to it that all your software functionalities must cater to the agile sprints. Since the feedback is hugely important, you cannot make a proper effort without it.

Feedback allows you to utilize the software assets efficiently and incorporate them before the next sprint meeting. This cycle assists in healthy meetings and better incorporation of the needs requested by clients. Incorporating feedback quickly enables adoption of an agile practice when you are building a full-fledged software project.

5. Improve Team Morale

Agile software development raises the standard of collaboration and communication for different teams. The nature of Agile approach allows teams to get excited about the upcoming challenges. The scrum meetings, feedback mechanisms, retrospectives, and prioritization ensure the team environment remains happening and active. Seamless communication, self-organization, treating members with respect, project transparency to the stakeholders, and high collaboration are some of the built-in properties of Agile methodology that bring positive change and motivate the teams.

Communication through different discussion boards and forums form the core of Agile software methodology. Agile approach demands a company to listen to its employees, communicate its plans to resolve concerns with employees and identify employees for their accomplishments and efforts.

Final Thoughts

Agile software development has a relationship-centric approach and repetitive delivery cycles that enable software engineers to deliver the highest-quality applications in the least time possible.

Are you looking to get help with implementing Agile software development? Get in touch with us. Our business model offers in-depth advantages of Agile approach, letting you make the most of offshoring software development team. Our processes are created to ensure productive client-team collaborations.