Agile project management (or the Agile methodology) helps businesses of all stripes improve in a handful of ways. It is, however, most easily applied in it’s purest form directly to companies with a technology or software development focus- like Android app development.
However, by looking at how Agile works as a whole, any business can benefit. Nearly one-quarter of companies, from a PMI survey of over 5,000 professionals, have taken an Agile approach to project management in the last 12 months and 80% of federal IT projects used an Agile approach. It can improve how a customer experience is tested and refined. It can help your business get more done and set realistic, achievable goals. It can even help your business adapt and make the most of new opportunities.
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Greater User Involvement
Agile development and project management put a lot of emphasis on having the entire team, including product testers, involved in the development process from start to finish. The goal of any business, in one way or another, is to please their customers so that those customers will continue to work with that business. By including testers that represent the average customer, and taking customer and team feedback into account, you can develop a better overall experience.
More Frequent Publishing – Get More Done
To stay ahead of the game and to force your business to keep improving, you need to “publish” or put out some sort of product, improvement, or other tangible results on a regular basis. This can be a small thing, but it needs to be something produced on a defined schedule.
This also means that whenever you put out a new product or iteration, you are that much closer to getting or improving its ROI. With Agile, profitability is closer and more achievable and keeps delivery cycles short.
Rapid Adaptation – The Ability to Make the Most of New Opportunities
A business making the most of the Agile methodology can adapt quickly. They’re used to making changes frequently and breaking things down so that they can get as much produced, launched, or published as promptly as possible and in a working state.
Due to short delivery cycles, as mentioned above, once a new potential opportunity has been identified, it should be simple to create a product that explores the possibility. The product can either pave the way for a more in-depth project, or it can highlight the need for more research.
Greater Team Involvement and Integration
With the Agile approach, all members of a team have a voice in any part of development. Further, in reviews and testing, it’s essential that all timelines, resources, and approaches are transparent and well-explained to everyone involved. This can help keep everyone on the same page and make sure that goals are met even if one or more team members experience issues or setbacks.
Reduced Risk
If you have to make small improvements and publish regularly, you won’t be spending years on a project openly to discover that it’s a complete failure or you missed your best launch window. Further, the sooner you launch, the sooner your product starts working for you or, the sooner you can identify issues with it. Then the next iteration will be better. Constant, rapid improvement that results from actual testing out in the world will create a product that has adapted to what the market wants more rapidly than a product developed in isolation could.
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