While switching to Agile practices is nothing uncommon these days, we are still often reluctant to accept it when it comes into our lives. This has little to do with the methodology itself and simply rests on the fact that most of us do not like change, any change. The question here is – should you focus on the fact of facing change or should you instead focus on what great rewards you will get after? We pick the latter and here are our top 3 things to look forward to after an Agile switch.
- Meaningful documents and meetings
Having to deal with excessive documentation and unproductive meetings is so common in today’s business world that it has become something we actually expect. However, despite this acceptance, it does not bring any substantial value to the team nor to the product and often creates demotivation instead of what we all seek – productivity.
This is exactly why your team will be happy to bring in Agile practices that preach the importance of value in everything you do. The meetings will be scheduled with a clear agenda and purpose – short daily standups to discuss progress, reviews to present to the client and retrospectives to discuss the overall project results. As for the documentation, only substantial parts will be left on the list and the iterative workflow will ensure there is no more need for planning out all the project steps, before the work has even began.
- Speed and quality
Another great thing Agile practices are able to bring to the table is the project completion speed and quality. While we are used to seeing these two things to be counter intuitive, with Agile both can actually be achieved at the same time. This is ensured with the help of short predefined iterations in which the teamwork is organized.
Having to organize work this way, makes the team rethink their processes and weed out all the unnecessary steps, thus allowing them to reach their goals more effectively and quickly. At the same time, having to present the completed work after each iteration, gives both the team and the client the ability to check if they are going in the right direction and make corrections if needed. At the end of the day, this results in quicker and better results for all.
- Ability to choose work
Even with the best managers, allocating work to team members can be a challenging task. It is hard to keep up with the changing project requirements and the team member abilities, therefore we usually look into experience and previous performance to estimate and allocate tasks correctly. And while for most of the time this approach pays off, more often than not, project managers run into problems where tasks or team members are misjudged and badly assigned causing un-satisfaction and delays.
With Agile methods the team or each team member assign the tasks to themselves. Instead of having tasks picked out, they get a chance to evaluate their capabilities and choose which task there are the best suited to complete. This approach not only allows for a better resource allocation, but also foster trust and ownership of work for each team member.
Bonus – Joy of work
Overall, by applying Agile practices, teams are able to enjoy their project and day-to-day work more. There are no more attending long meetings, burying yourself in unnecessary documentation and getting tasks that you have no competence of completing. This enables the team to work in a better organized and more motivating environment, in which they can produce better results for you!
