What Makes Agile Popular In Project Management?

Starting a new project and expecting it to do wonders for your firm is like bringing a pack of the best noodles and expecting it to cook by itself. You must have an impeccable project management strategy in place as it helps align the project with the overall strategy of the business. With a better project management strategy, you can always be sure that the project’s goals and the subsequent tasks are aligned with the business strategy. And currently, the best project management approach that any firm can use is agile.

But this doesn’t mean that the popularity of agile methods is confined to the project management sphere only. Agile is no longer associated with the process of software development only.

Many firms are flocking toward agile methods. The approaches used in the agile methodology have become popular among different products, services, and companies that need to be highly flexible because of the quick changes in the market.

The traditional agile approach focused on software over comprehensive documents, individuals over tools, collaboration over negotiation, and responding to changes over the existing plan. So, we can define agile project management methods as an impeccable strategy as it has collected its unique subset of different methodologies used in project management. Some of these methodologies are:

• Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM)
• Adaptive Software Development (ASD)
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Feature Driven Development (FDD), and
• Kanban

The secret behind the growing popularity of agile

The incremental and iterative nature of agile project management helps teams narrow down their focus to crucial things while not forgetting about the service or product they are planning to launch. Meanwhile, the development team can keep on making changes to improve the results of the project.

Typically the two to three weeks of delay in the project was transformed into a delay of many months and years, and by the time the product or service was ready, it had already become obsolete. But such problems were wiped with the help of agile project management.

The benefits of using agile

When you start searching for the perks of using agile, you will find a long list, and most of the advantages in the list will fit like a glove in the needs of your firm. Still, we have compiled a list of 10 benefits that makes project managers succumb to using agile.

Evolutionary- By using agile, you give enough time to your team members to learn with every new draft introduced in the process.

Troubleshooting– Instead of working on their own, team members learn collaborative troubleshooting, which boosts the project’s speed.

Feedback– Agile focuses on rapid feedback, which helps the team members know the areas of improvement.

Creative– Agile promotes creative working instead of overburdening, which helps maintain the quality of the project.

Quick corrections- With the help of agile, every team member can make immediate corrections as they get regular feedback from stakeholders.

Now, let’s try to understand the scope and power of agile through one of its methods, and for this blog post, we have taken DSDM’s agile project framework as an example for better understanding.

What is the Dynamic System Development Method?

This development method consists of roles and responsibilities, eight basic principles, products, and a life cycle, and some of the best practices. The basic idea behind DSDM is to deliver business benefits strategically and in an aligned way. And this should be done as early as possible while focusing on the best ROI.

Some of the principles of DSDM

Although there are eight principles of DSDMS, we are only going to give a glimpse of the principles.

Focusing on business decision

While managing a project, every decision made in the firm should be viewed in light of the project’s goal. This helps in delivering the real needs of the business without compromising on the project.

Delivering on time

Focus on delivering on time as late delivery often undermines a project’s rationale, especially when there are market deadlines. Delivering on time helps in dealing with legal deadlines as well.

Collaboration

Collaborative teams have always been more successful than those groups where individual work is prioritized. With better collaboration comes better understanding, and it leads to increased productivity.

Never compromise quality

The level of quality that needs to be delivered must be decided even before the start of the DSDM. And there should be no compromise in the quality at any stage of production.

If you want to reduce the wastage of resources and improve team effort, then agile is the way to go for you. An agile framework can be implemented in any firm size, but proper care should be given while choosing the subgroups of the agile approach.