• Agile & Scrum Basics

Are you ready to work Agile? Here 11 Recognition Points

Today, Agile working is often applied in all kinds of large and small organizations; This working method focuses on effectiveness and efficiency. Are you ready for Agile working? And why should you consider starting with Agile working?

Scrum Academy has all the Agile training you need to make your organization an Agile organization. In this blog, we give you 11 reasons so you too can implement the working methods in your organization.

How Agile is your strategy? Do you recognize yourself in any of the areas of improvement below?

1. Feedback

It happens with some regularity that functions of a delivered product are not used by the customer. A great shame, of course. It is a waste of time that team members have invested in getting the functions working optimally. It is of course much more useful if they spend this time on parts that customers do use.

With Scrum, partial products are delivered in sprints. After each sprint, there is a Sprint Review where all stakeholders, as well as customers, get the chance to give feedback on the partial product. This feedback is used during the upcoming sprints.

2. Increased quality

By going Agile, after taking Agile training, you increase quality. Developers have more time to develop the product and the other team members take care of the peripheral issues.

Clear quality criteria are incorporated into the Definition of Done. This ensures that everyone is clear about how a high-quality product is made. Resulting in less rework. More time. More focused quality.

3. Creating the right products and/or services

Chances are that the Scrum team builds what the customer asks for, but in practice this product is used in a completely different way than previously planned. By delivering a partial product after each sprint and then optimizing it, the Scrum team has a better understanding of what the real customer requirements are and what the product is being used for.

4. Agile makes predictable

Whereas organizations often gave little detail about delivery time, Agile working now makes the process more manageable: customers know exactly how long it will take to develop a product and what they can expect. With Agile sprints, the delivery rhythm of a Scrum team has been made predictable. This makes working together incredibly pleasant for the customer.

5. Customer Satisfaction

Customers have the opportunity to follow the development process of the product. The Scrum team always stays in conversation with the customer in order to deliver the best possible product together. In doing so, you make a customer extra happy, of course.

6. Motivation of team members

Sometimes Agile is chosen because the corporate culture is in need of renewal. Now Agile is incredibly popular and employees are curious about this different way of working. Self-organizing teams are always central to Agile working, and all colleagues work toward a common goal. If implemented properly, Agile can bring many benefits. For example, it brings to life an Agile organization in which people enjoy working together.

7. Reduced risks

Agile working has a direct effect on reducing the risks surrounding the delivery of wrong products. Agile can more or less be called risk management. The partial products are presented to the customer every 2 to 4 weeks. They have immediate feedback on this and so the chance of delivering the wrong end product is greatly reduced.

8. Faster ROI (Return on Investment).

Because of the value of the small partial products, you can get to your customer and the market faster. Because you can offer the customer a working product, they are more likely to decide to purchase the product.

9. Efficient

The Agile method works great at eliminating waste (time and work). There is no point in setting up huge projects in advance. This often yields too little. It also makes almost no sense to have people working separately from each other. Cooperation between team members is often seen as more efficient and enjoyable.

10. Smoother time-to-market

Many organizations encounter lengthy delivery times. This frequently results in delivery of the wrong products or services. Working Agile completely sidesteps this problem, as it works with a delivery period of 2 – 4 weeks in the form of short sprints.

11. Clear core values

The “Agile manifesto” causes all kinds of new working methods to emerge. So there is a working solution for every organization, every company, every institution. However, work is always done in the form of teamwork and using the 4 following principles:

• People and their interactions over processes and tools;
• Delivered subprojects over comprehensive documentation or plans;
• Working with clients over contract negotiations;
• Responding to change over following a plan.