Agile was born in the software development world, but is now spreading like wildfire to other business areas from HR to Marketing to procurement, and elsewhere, as more leaders become aware of the benefits from utilizing Agile methodologies.
Learn how Agile’s greater flexibility, openness to changes, and greater customer involvement can bring benefits to your business or organization.
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Waterfall relies heavily on initial requirements. However, if these requirements aren’t documented precisely, or there was a misunderstanding around the detail of what the customer wanted, it makes things very difficult. Not so with Agile – requirements are checked and confirmed throughout the project.
Once a step has been completed in Waterfall, it’s difficult to go back and make changes. In contrast, Agile builds a working version of the whole project so the customer can shape how it’s built. Seeing a working version early on in the project allows the customer to say ‘I like this, but I don’t like that’, and so shape the product according to their requirements. This is harder to do with Waterfall because the customer has to outline all their preferences upfront, without seeing a working version.
Agile sees the customer as part of the implementation team and includes them at each part of the process. In contrast, Waterfall tends to spend a lot of time with the customer at the start, trying to document all the perceived requirements. But once this has happened, the implementation team usually take over.
With Waterfall, the product is mainly tested at the end of the project. If the customer’s needs weren’t captured well initially or they have changed since the start of the project, testing may come too late in the cycle to make big adjustments. The customer then has to find extra budget to get the product they now need. With Agile, testing happens regularly through the whole process, so the customer periodically checks that the product is what they envisioned. This also makes it more likely that the project will finish on time, and on budget.
The agile method’s iterative nature also means the end product is ready for market faster, staying ahead of the competition and quickly reaping benefits. The benefits of the agile method are cutting costs and time to market in half, while increasing application quality and customer satisfaction.
Waterfall isn’t geared to take into account a customer’s evolving needs. If business processes change during the project Waterfall isn’t set up to adapt to this. Often a client feels locked into a project that no longer meets the current business need. In contrast, Agile not only has the ability to adapt to changing needs, but it expects them and plans for them.
Unlike more traditional methods, Agile methodologies help teams design products and manage projects that are more closely tied to the needs of their users. The iterative process of Agile takes off the pressure to “get it right the first time” and allows for a more adaptive approach. Ironically, this typically leads to higher quality.
More than just a quick tweet or blog article, Agile Marketing uses data and analytics to continuously test solutions to problems, evaluate the results, and rapidly iterating. A high-functioning agile marketing organization can run hundreds of campaigns and multiple new ideas every week.
An agile team delivers work in small but consumable increments. Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously, so teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.”
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