Why is Agile so Popular

Why is Agile so Popular


Agile has immensely gained popularity in the last few years owing to the variety of beautiful designed methodologies it offers, making it applicable to all sizes of organizations in any industry.  A host of organizations are adopting agile to deliver valuable projects on time and within budget.


What essentially is Agile?
Agile basically is an umbrella term for methodologies that are built on set principles under the agile manifesto. These methodologies guide you on on how to implement concepts, how to identify roles and responsibilities and how to adopt practices that give specific solutions.

What’s the Agile Manifesto?

  •  Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
  •  Working software over comprehensive documentation.
  •  Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
  • Responding to change over following a plan.


Why is Agile steadily gaining popularity?

  • Agile puts prime focus on the most essential element of software development, and that is the people behind it.  In an agile set up, workers are not just looked at, as knowledge containers, rather they are looked upon as valuable channels, which accumulate knowledge, embody it, and then apply it, so as to produce additional knowledge. This is a potent approach in engaging well, the workers in an organization.
  • In an agile set up, software is delivered in iterations in a pre-fixed rhythm. This gives the organisation more clarity regarding what is being built and how best to change it (if need be) to suit market needs, owing to continuous generation of customer feedback.
  • Owing to its short testing phases throughout the development of the project, the organisations incur lesser costs. This is because if changes have to be made after the project is near completion, it will involve huge expenditures on restarting with applied changes. Agile therefore is very flexible in responding to changes in demands.
  • By adopting iterative delivery model, organizations are better equipped to face competitive activities without sacrifice on quality.
  •  Teams in Agile are self-organizing and self-managing. They mutually make all decisions regarding roles of individuals, identifying and removing obstacles, and coordinating activities. The team who is working actively in the project is best when it comes to taking decisions regarding the project.
  • At the completion of every iteration, the whole team reflects on and discusses good performances, the ultimate goal, and what can be done to improvise things to make the process better built to achieve the goal. This improvises the team and the quality of its delivery.
  • Agile grants people, the autonomy to make decisions, freedom to alter them, and mastery to improvise on existing skills. This works well on all team members, giving them motivation to forge ahead.
  • Agile makes products reach the consumers faster. Since it follows the iteration system, a working model of the product is always there, made available, and then worked on.
  • It has been noted, that there is an increased productivity in an agile system, as compared to traditional management system. Products are continuously put to test, problems are solved and improvisations are made on a continual basis.
  • Agile improves confidence greatly. Agility in decisions is the best that can happen to projects. Bold decisions are taken with ease and that opens windows of opportunities for newer techniques and newer solutions.
  •  Since the management, the team, and the stakeholders work closely in Agile, it builds a great amount of trust between them. Trust is greatly valued, and pushes individuals to drive better like no other.


Due to the wonderful benefits that Agile project management gives, it has rose to be the most preferred project management method in the last few years. Organizations are steadily waking up to these efficient management techniques, and once they do, there is never looking back.

 

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Paul Hillers MBA, MPA

Senior Project Manager - NEC Technologies

9y

Agile has some wonderful advantages, but like any other development system it has weaknesses. Agile does not, for example, lend itself well to projects that need a lot of architectural processes put in place prior to the start of coding. I think agile appeals to those people who don't like doing designs, having them reviewed and in general doing standard documentation. It's also not a good methodology if your client requires copious documentation, as agile is pretty averse to creating any beyond the minimum necessary. I think properly applied to the right project it can do wonders over other methods. But I see a lot of interest in agile where it should NOT be used due to the nature of the project. And all the benefits are lost as you do re-work because the project was in too much of a hurry and could not accommodate proper planning and interactions between disparate teams. It should be evaluated and compared to other methodologies and implemented when it's the best for a particular project. None of the methodologies can cite a one-size-fits-all approach.

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Anindya Roy

Solution Architect & Product Pre-Sales, TCUP (TCS Connected Universe Platform)

9y

Very nice article which gives the advantages of Agile but being always a skeptical guy and seeing in many deliveries where agile was used, some viewpoints from my side. Customers are hardly available for collaborations and they are replaced by a middle layer of IT people and a lot of lost in translations happen. There is hardly time for retrospection as in most cases the design follow in their own cycle, the development in another cycle and testing in another. Mind it these cycles might not have any relation between them. With a onsite-offshore model, working in Agile though we do have regular scrums but doing it over phone across geographies is a real pain. Customers take undue advantage in changing requirements and keeping the date of the delivery same. On a different note , I think that Agile is very much suited for rolling out a transaction system or implementing an ERP but still not suited to build up a data warehouse at least not an EDW.

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Dr. Niladri Choudhuri

CEO of Xellentro, International Author, Consultant on Sustainability & Resilience, President Green Computing Foundation, Sustainable IT Manifesto Signatory, Independent Director

9y

Thank You Vaibhav Umbarje stay tuned to the page for more posts

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Vaibhav Umbarje

Assistant General Manager & ISO

9y

Quite informative. Thanks

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Debjit Banerjee

Vice President | CPG, Manufacturing - New Product Innovation and Strategy Execution Leader, working with CEO's and CXO's | ITC Ltd., PwC, Microsoft India R&D, IBM.

9y

Nicely portrays the essence of agile ... i think the most significant driver for agile is, as its mentioned in the article, that it helps reaching the customer faster.

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