What is the need for Being Agile?

The meaning of the word “Agile” is to move quickly and easily. This simple concept is now widely utilised in various industries as the main framework of business & culture transformation. By following the Agile methodology, it is easier to obtain productive results within the planned time by utilising available resources.

Agile is an iterative approach which helps to develop an effective product with the collaboration between cross functional and self organised teams.

Let’s talk about a situation, where you are planning to develop a product within a duration of one month. You start with planning, organising resources, development and finally execution. But what would be the situation, if you cannot prioritise the work according to the needs? Here, Agile comes into the scenario for betterment of your work and product.

Well, Agile is not the only way to complete your product successfully. There are other methods like waterfall, or traditional sequential development. But Agile methodology helps to get effective results by reducing the cost of implementation.

How is Agile different from traditional methods?

In traditional waterfall technique, the product is designed with the execution of four basic activities:

Analysis, Design, Coding and Testing. These activities are followed sequentially but the method ignores the time cadence, So there are more chances of facing disadvantages like

•  Low quality - Since there might be chances to reduce the time spent on testing a product, more often product suffers in quality or incomplete product at the end of the timeline.
•  Poor visibility - in the planning of a product, team is not sure about the time need to be spent on testing, so there will be less coordination at the end.
•  Bond to risks - since the product is tested in final step, it takes more time to get conclusion of where exactly it is going wrong and takes more time than scheduled.
•  Less support for any modification - Because each activities is considered as different tasks, there is a chance for less collaboration of work and feedback.

But in Agile, the testing activity is followed in each and every step. So there is continuous integration of the work to get the effective results. Here clients are included in the process loop, so it is easy for them to know the status of their product in the stage of formation and helps the teams to modify the changes with their feedback.

By implementing Agile methodology, it is easy to enhance the qualities like collaboration, process adaptability, coordination and development in teams throughout the project life-cycle. Which results in higher visibility, good quality, flexibility, lower risk factor, cost control, right product delivery, customer satisfaction and more friendly/enjoyable work atmosphere.

Agile Manifesto - We follow certain principles, in order to deliver product to the customers in a sustainable way.

1.  Individuals and Interactions over process and tools - Self organisation and motivation are important which allows to build more coordination within the teams.
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation - Working software is more useful and productive, instead of just demonstrating the documented file to the clients. 
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation - It is not easy to get all the client requirements at a single scratch, so involving customer or stakeholder continuously in the process is important.
4. Responding to change over following a plan - Agile methodology helps the teams to respond quickly for any feedback and helps to involve in continuous development.

Based on the Agile manifesto, the twelve principles of Agile Software has been developed that supports to adopt Agile in an organisation. To know more about Agile manifesto, please visit www.agilemanifesto.org

In Agile methodology, all the works are referred as user stories in team level and they are handled in different iterations (time period of two weeks) which are planned to be complete in a particular PI (Program Increments). This technique allows to obtain roadmaps for the organisational vision and mobile execution.

There is a difference between doing Agile and being Agile. Doing Agile, relates to adopting practices and techniques, whereas being Agile, relates to the mindset and behaviors (You can say culture of the organization) we use as we build a hold on Agile practices and techniques.