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Companies adopt agile for any number of reasons, usually stemming from a dissatisfaction with how things are currently working and a desire to improve. Most are struggling with the reality of ever-changing environments, customer needs, technological advancements and competitor pressure. 

Here are a few reasons why agile can help to speed up your business:

1. Improved velocity and cadence of delivery

Long delivery cycles just aren’t practical in today’s fast-paced world. Customer expectations, market conditions, and market competition (both known and unknown) are all changing rapidly. Agile can help by first focusing on what delivers the most value and then breaking that delivery into incremental units to get it out to market faster.

2. Improved productivity

An often-cited metric from the Standish Group is that 64% of product features are rarely or never used. An agile approach puts the customer at the forefront of delivery, solving the right problem at the right time, for the right reason. Doing so allows businesses to become more productive, and delivery more predictable.

3. Improved customer satisfaction

Building the right product is all about ensuring product fit for customers, focusing on developing more of what they want and less of what they don’t. When delivering in smaller increments, there is greater opportunity to gain feedback, to modify if required, and arrive at both a better product and customer outcome.

4. Reduced costs/waste

In waterfall projects, the larger and more complicated a project becomes the greater likelihood of a budget blow out. In fact, a McKinsey/Oxford University report suggests that, on average, 45% go over budget. Cost is an important area of waste but so too is the wasted time and effort from producing products that aren’t fit for purpose or that aren’t delivering in terms of value provided. The same McKinsey/Oxford University report suggests that as well as going over budget, 7% of projects go over time and deliver 56% less value than expected. Agile can help to cut costs and waste by using backlogs to prioritise, delivering a minimal viable product and thin-slicing activity with a ruthless, laser-like focus on value.

5. Improved employee engagement

At its heart, Agile is about a cultural and a mindset shift. Agile teams are more collaborative and communicative than traditional teams.  They are also less siloed because they are cross-functional – they are organised around products and priorities. This gives employees greater connection to what they are doing and why they are doing it, which in turn provides a greater sense of both purpose and job satisfaction. 

6. Better quality

Agile supports a better quality of product by breaking development down into smaller more manageable units to develop, test and release. And because it allows for early usability testing and customer feedback, defects are identified and resolved quickly.

7. Continuous improvement

One of the key elements of an agile approach is the use of Kaizen or continuous improvement – a search for better through maximising customer value, removing waste and speeding up time to market. Quality reviews through retrospectives are one such example where performance is reviewed, impediments are identified, and improvements focused on.   

 
8. Reduced risk

By using a lightweight framework and delivering incrementally, Agile reduces the risk of large scale project failure. Agile encourages a fast-fail approach where we can experiment, test and pivot quickly. It allows for quick to learn approach to development.