What is Agile and What are the Benefits
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Insight
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Project Management
Introducing an Agile way of working, stimulates continuous improvement. On top of that, it allows people and teams to work more flexibly. In this article, we will explore a couple of frameworks and focus on the main benefits of an Agile way of working.
One of the advantages of working in an Agile way is to have the ability to create and respond to change. Today, technological innovation and digital transformation advance at a rapid speed. In these challenging times, priorities and customer needs are in constant flux. How do we respond?
THE AGILE way of working explained
The Agile way of working consists of 3 different layers:
- Values and principles
- A framework (e.g. SCRUM)
- A set of practices
The Agile values (4) and principles (12) are documented in the Agile Manifesto (https://agilemanifesto.org/)
Working in an Agile way (or being Agile) means that there is an Agile mindset reflecting in internalizing mindset and values, applying the right practices and tailoring them when needed.
The opposite of “being Agile” is “doing Agile”: there is a focus on learning and applying practices without adopting Agile values and principles
Agile frameworks at a team level
Let’s take a look at the most important and popular ones.
SCRUM
The 3 pillars of the Scrum framework (www.scrum.org) are transparency, inspection, and adaption. Successful use of Scrum depends on people becoming more proficient in living the values of Commitment, Focus, Openness, Respect and Courage.
There Scrum team consists of only 3 roles: a Scrum Master (accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness), a Product Owner (accountable for maximizing the value of the product) and a Developer.
The 5 Scrum events consist of the Sprint, the Sprint Planning, the Daily Scrum, the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective. Finally, in Scrum, you work with 3 Scrum artefacts: the Product Backlog, the Sprint Backlog and the Increment
KANBAN
Kanban is a popular, highly visual agile framework inspired by the Toyota Production System. It is built on the idea of real-time communication of capacity and full transparency of work. Team members see the state of every work item at any time because they are visually represented on a Kanban board.
Every work item is presented as a separate card on the board. Team members can consequently track the work progress visually.
One of the important elements of a Kanban system is limiting the WIP (work in progress), to optimize the flow of work through the Kanban board
Scaling Agile framenworks
Once you have 2 or more Agile teams working on the same product, there is the opportunity to scale at a higher level or even at the company level.
SAFE
For the moment, SAFe is one of the most popular scaling Agile frameworks. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organisational and workflow patterns. Its goal is to implement agile practices and workflows at an enterprise scale.
It delivers a structured set of best practices, workflow practices and recommendations on roles, responsibilities, values and management practices. (https://scaledagileframework.com/)
LeSS is another example of a scaled Agile framework (https://less.works/), together with Scrum@Scale (https://www.scrumatscale.com/) and others like Spotify, Nexus, and DA.
Hybrid agile project management
Hybrid Agile Project Management is a mix between classical waterfall projects and the Agile way of working.
In this approach, projects are broken down into several dynamic iterations, usually known as sprints. The approach also greatly favours continuous collaboration and improvement.
The benefits of agile
Adopting an Agile way of working comes with different benefits. Let’s take a look at the most important ones
- Faster time to market
- Increased productivity
- Improved quality
- Higher employee satisfaction
- Have also a look at one of our earlier blog posts where we assist Colruyt Group in their Agile journey
How Prosource helps your agile approach
Prosource has the knowledge and experience needed to help you reap the benefits of the Agile way of working.
Our company was founded in 2002 to help businesses improve the success rate of their projects sustainably.
Our experienced project managers and Agile coaches will help you finish your project within budget and on time.
Since 2002, we have managed many different projects for many different clients, learning a lot and continuously improving along the way.
We’re eager to share our experience with you. Interested? Then don’t hesitate to contact us!
