Want to Ace Project Management? Go Agile!!

The agile strategy encompasses building the right products by optimizing their release through development rather than marketing before development.

Agile methodology was first incorporated in software development for project management, but today, any startup business or a small and budding business can freely adapt to master project management.

With that, getting a team ready & work on a project is often easier said than done!!

Thankfully, following a project management approach can help us organize & streamline the project into structured milestones & goals to deliver it successfully without stretching the project deadline.

When it comes to project management, there are many models out there - Lean, Agile, Waterfall, or Six Sigma, to mention a few.

And it is essential to understand that different projects benefit from other methodologies. There’s no such thing as one size fits all since every project manager knows the importance of selecting the proper project management methodology to achieve the desired results per the expectations.

While there are many models, “Agile” is the most commonly & popularly used methodology in today's digital space.

So let’s learn what agile is all about. This blog post will take you through an effortless journey covering the following subsections:

• What is Agile Strategy?
• Benefits of being Agile
• Real-time practices for Agile
• Why go with Agile?
• Agile in Everyday life!!

What is Agile Strategy?

Agile is a value-driven iterative approach to project management that will help you deliver the project to your customers as promised.

In this approach, project management will take place in several steps. They are iterative cycles where the management team will be involved in constant collaborations with the customer and take a critique review from the stakeholders and other representatives at each cycle.

Necessary changes will be made after each feedback, and the product's reproduction begins again for the customer.

This methodology will help the management team to have a clear understanding of the customer’s requirements and expectations.

It will help your team continuously incorporate those feedback and make necessary changes, saving resources, time, budget, and everything else.

Instead of following a linear approach, Agile will help you embrace the changes and re-evaluate the end product.

With a few tweaks through Agile, you can increase development speed, achieve adaptability, expand collaborations and ensure flexibility.

Now that you have an idea about what Agile is. Let’s explore a bit more.

We, humans, are a different breed and always look for efficient ways to do things, meaning, do the things that take less time and more outcomes and benefits.

Similarly, knowing how to practice Agile is essential if you’re looking to increase your business's ROIs. You cannot adopt it if you have no idea. So to pull out your business organization from financial or any other crisis, you must go Agile!!

Scroll down to learn how agile can benefit your organization.

Benefits of being Agile

Upgraded Quality

If you want to be your customer’s favorite by delivering the best end product, agile is the approach that will help you achieve it and more.

In the agile framework, the project gets broken down into manageable sprints, which go for continuous testing after each cycle. It helps the team resolve potential issues after each sprint.

Thus, you can deliver your clients a defectless and outstanding end product.

Taking advantage of automated tools for continuous integration like Github and GitLab for creating CI-CD pipelines and daily testing, organizing sprint retrospectives, taking reviews after each iteration, and more will help you achieve your goal quickly.

This proactive approach will help you embrace technological excellence and deliver the best end product!

Customer Engagement and Satisfaction

With the help of Agile, there develops interaction and engagement between customers and developers. After each cycle or sprint, the customer’s feedback will be provided; this will indeed increase the collaboration and help the developer understand what the customers exactly need.

This constant engagement will help developers prioritize the requirements and provide them with opportunities to give their best shot!

After these review sessions, the bugs will be rectified, and the final product will surely satisfy the client.

It is how the Agile approach has also helped us deliver high-quality end products .

Consequently, delivering quality products will gain clients' loyalty toward your team.

So Agile means more projects!!

Budget Problem Check

While using traditional approaches, you provide your clients with a predicted cost for the entire development, making it harder for them to decide whether to go with your organization. But this problem has been solved by our ace player in the management game.

Don’t you know who that is? Oh, that Agile!

Agile Cost Graph

Provided a particular budget for each sprint timeline, the customer will better understand the amount charged for each feature by giving a specific budget for each sprint timeline. So this will help the customer prioritize elements of the product.

It will also help the team work on those features more readily to provide your firm with additional business value. So agile can completely change the cost curve.

Transparency

With continuous interactions between clients and developers, the agile methodology helps them work as collaborative peers. The frequent review session will help the client keep track of the work process. It is an added advantage of transparency, ensuring customers can track their project's status.

This transparency and engagement between clients and the team of developers will help you avoid constraints and uncertainties like - what if something goes wrong!!

The development team will have a scope to change the direction of the projects for new objectives to be included.

Rapid Delivery

It is almost impossible for management teams to predict when the project will be completed and ready for its delivery.

But the impossible itself has a possibility in it. And Quokka Labs knows it, making it possible using the AGILE methodology.

With agile, you can always be ahead of the curve since, in the business world, “Speed defines everything.”

The breaking cycles or iterations will help you understand the customer’s complaints and provide you with the possibility of rectifying them ASAP. It will ensure that you can easily predict the timeline for each cycle and deliver the end product in the specified timeline.

Team’s adaptability

After each iteration, the developer will become more familiar with the customer's requirements. So the team of developers will be able to adapt vigorously to the client’s business requirements. This adaptability is the cornerstone of agile methodology.

It helps your team to be able to avoid overspending and acquire new skills, which ultimately helps you deliver the product within the deadline and eliminate all the possible errors that may arise and can cause irreparable damage.

Defeating Risks

If you are taking up a project, complete it and deliver it. What will you do if the customer doesn’t like it? Will you just let your efforts go in vain?

The clear answer is a big No!

Agile is a method that helps you virtually avoid such scenarios.

With iterative review sessions, you can implement all the changes the client needs then and there. You don’t have to wait until the completion of the project.

Knowing the customer’s preferences can eliminate the risk of project failure.

Now that you know how agile benefits you, you will also want to use it with your team. To do that, you need to understand a set of principles.

So, keep scrolling to know them.

Here you go, agile!!

Real-time practices of AGILE

Being together is the strength

It is to all the teams that are practicing agile. You must constantly contact your clients, have conversations with them, and try to understand their vision for the product. Ally with the customers because you must rely on each other throughout the journey.

Iterations

Iterations are the soul of the Agile method. So make sure that you are following the divide-and-rule policy. With each iteration comes new development, so break the entire project into manageable chunks and allow them to represent teams.

Never Avoid Scrum Meetings; they’re fun!!

Scrum meetings are small and short meetings conducted daily where clients and developers will be present. This meeting is conducted to identify what was done, the problems, the solutions, and what needs to be done.

Scrum meetings always help you learn something, even if you think there’s nothing to learn.

Classifying the Metrics

Agile is all about breaking complex management structures into simpler ones. So it would help if you analyzed the cost and timeline for the project. It will help the client to prioritize his tasks.

Burn-down Charts

These charts are used to monitor work progress. They demonstrate how much work has been completed and how much of the work is still pending against time.

A burn-down chart is like a calendar of all the work events throughout the project. It reflects the potential risks and eliminates any scope of causing them.

Test-driven Development

While developing the project, agile suggests your team run a functionality test to help identify the scope of a possible error. So the unit can modify these mistakes and make improvements in time.

Initiating Communication Guidelines

To make your project a milestone, your team must communicate seamlessly with the clients.

They can be from any country or state, so you must communicate well with them.

It will not only help fasten the development process but most importantly, you can deliver what your client’s vision is within the expected timeline.

Project Backlog

The name itself says what’s it all about. Project backlog is all about listing things during the project management process.

It will help your team and the client stays on the same page and eliminate any scope of failure.

Why go with AGILE?

With all the other models present, you may ask, “ Why only Agile?”

Well, we have got an answer to that.

Regarding project management, we all are worried about two crucial factors: Money and time.

Agile has many benefits, but the two significant factors post adopting an agile methodology that helped Quokka Labs reach milestones are cost & time.

Agile offers you the best way to save money and time and deliver the best end the project you can.

But how? Let’s see!

Agile for Budget Obstacles

With iteration cycles, all the problems can be eliminated in the initial stages. As you communicate with the customer, you will have a clear vision of their priorities, so there will be no extra features which means no extra money.

That’s not just it. Agile is a framework where problems are rectified in the initial stages. So this can be the root of all issues because the time taken to solve a project is more expensive.

Agile for Optimizing Time

Building a project may usually take six months, four months, or more or less. But with agile, the time limit is all under your control. As the iterations take place timely, it will take very little time to roll back and add new aspects or change the previous ones.

The frequent Q&A conducted between the client and developer will make it very precise about what is required for the project. So this will help us save a lot of time and avoid wasting it going for unnecessary things for the project.

If there are other models, you need to wait until the completion of the project to get customers to review it, and if they don’t like it, then BOOM! You are in big trouble. It would help if you did it repeatedly, wasting money, time, and effort.

So to save yourself from the big problem, choose Agile, which has a crucial feature called Iterations that will help you use your TIME and MONEY wisely.

Agile in every day of life!!

If you think Agile is for only project management, you are wrong. Agile can be a part of your day-to-day life too. These examples will inspire why you should choose agile for project management or how it helps in project management.

Remodeling your house

To remodel your house, you must consider time and money constraints. You must prioritize which room must be redone first and follow an order.

Planning a wedding

While planning a wedding, you will surely hire a wedding planner. They will prioritize the events according to you, and you will act as a client and constantly inform them about your requirements.

Agile for strategies

It may be your workplace or home; you will always have to break more significant tasks into simpler ones and then organize them accordingly. For planning new strategies, you should always consider all the constraints and take action steps to decide which will help you ace your work.

Playing sports

Whenever you are playing sports, there’s always a captain for the team who will plan everything for the team, take their suggestions, prioritize the training, and decide what’s best for the team.

Wrapping the agile story!!

Agile is a complete methodology for achieving more significant breakthroughs in your personal life and business organization. Proper governance and a deeper understanding of the end goals ensure that your project is going in the right direction.

If you want to be better than your competition and remain a few steps ahead in the game, choosing Agile for a better tomorrow is essential.

At Quokka Labs, all things are about being Agile!!

We conduct deep research and in-depth analysis of the project requirements to meet the client’s business goals & break down the requirements into manageable milestones.

Post that, it is the sole responsibility of all team members (such as Designers, Developers, Quality Assurance Engineers, etc.) to deal with your project while moving ahead to manage the project milestones & work towards a common goal.

With that, I leave you with a few words - thank you for reading this article!

And if you have something in mind, like a product idea that can positively change people’s lives, talk to our Business & Technology Consultants & let us help you create a scalable digital solution with the highest quality & stability.

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