• Agile & Scrum Basics

These are the 9 benefits of Agile working

Of course, there are all kinds of ways to collaborate effectively, as well as efficiently. Nowadays, many organizations are choosing the Agile way of working. This article focuses on the benefits of Agile working.

For starters, Agile allows you to respond to changes faster. This gives you a grip on the progress of processes and projects within the organization. You continuously deliver value because you work in very short cycles. Because you get actionable feedback from customers faster, you minimize risks.

In this article, we discuss these issues:

• Benefits of Agile working
• Why work Agile?
• Agile what is that?

Benefits of Agile working

1. Motivation

Agile forms teams in which self-direction has a central position. Teams in which people work (together) with a common goal. Agile creates a fine organization with a good working atmosphere.

2. Efficiency

Waste, you don’t like it. If you have people working together, and not separately from each other, then people are not throwing work at each other. This streamlines the process.

3. Customer Satisfaction

Agile is not a magic phenomenon or a magic trick, but customers see it as a process in which everyone works well together for the best product.

4. Predictability

Customers today are happy just to know when something is roughly ready. With Agile working, your teams are better able to make the pace of delivery more predictable.

5. Faster time-to-market

Are you tired of the long delivery cycles? Logically. It often results in wrong products that are more interesting or relevant. With Agile working, you have a faster cadence of delivery.

6. Quick Return On Investment

Partial products often deliver too little, but with Agile, many short sprints make a working product.

7. Feedback from your customers

Scrum provides a framework that delivers partial products in short sprints, and during each Sprint Review you collect customer feedback. You use this for the next Agile sprint. You are flexible and responsive.

8. Right products or services

The fact that you deliver partial products and continually optimize the product ensures that you have a good view of what the customer wants as well as how your customer will ultimately use the product.

9. Reducing risk

You use the quick delivery and feedback from the client for adjustments and/or improvements. This ensures the risk reduction: no wrong products or services are delivered.

Why work Agile?

The world is changing faster than ever. And is more agile than ever. Just think about the development of technology. From the beginning of the cell phone to now: navigation system, banking, weather forecasting, dating apps… With this speed of development, it is almost impossible to predict how the market will move in 5 years.

To survive, we will need to be able to move quickly with volatile markets and changing conditions. Individuals, departments, teams and organizations are agile and continuously adapt. That is the true essence of Agile!

Agile what is that?

Agile is a movement that is changing business on a global scale. Often an Agile process is founded on 4 common elements:

1. Flexible strategy

When developing a product, the Agile team does not make complex and difficult plans, but focuses on discovering the best ideas. The moment an idea does not work, they learn from it and make adjustments. Agile working gives maximum room for adjustment.

2. Multidisciplinary teams

The goal of the multidisciplinary team is to form a dedicated team that requires less to no direction from managers. This allows the team to respond more quickly to change. They can organize their own work and take responsibility without the intervention of managers. This works easier and faster.

3. Working with short cycles

This helps teams deliver value to the customer and/or client in a short period of time. In a set rhythm of one or two weeks, also called sprints, the multidisciplinary team makes adjustments. During these sprints, the team also incorporates client input.

4. Visual work

Your team works with boards on which the work is visualized. This allows you to see at a glance what the team is working on and its progress.