Think quick

AGILE IS FAST BECOMING the methodology of choice for businesses investing in bespoke software solutions. This is because it provides some much welcomed relief to those fed up with software project failures and implementations that are merely `good enough`.

Agile methods enable software development teams to deliver the highest possible business value in the shortest amount of time, while being able to adapt to changes in requirements during development. This is a huge leap forward in terms of value for money, in an industry where late delivery, inflexible requirements, cost overruns, and quality issues are all too common.

So what are some of the business benefits of an agile approach?

Foremost, agile projects offer a quicker return on investment. Agile teams build software in stages, so they are able to release fully tested `production ready` software every few weeks. This makes it possible to deliver real value early and on a regular basis, which means that the product can start to pay for itself even before development is fully complete. Shorter delivery times can also mean quicker market penetration and increased opportunity cost.

Agile projects allow for far greater control: the product owner has the ability to add or remove features during development, or to change direction completely. This flexibility tends to produce an end result that better delivers what the business really needs, rather than what they thought they required at the beginning of the project.

Faster delivery is also a key benefit. By continuous reprioritisation of requirements, feature-sets offering the highest business value are built first. This eliminates the possibility of building unneeded features, which saves time and cost.

Project management in an agile project is more accurate and realistic than in traditional methods, which means there is less uncertainty, and project stakeholders have less to worry about.

Agile also helps teams find and fix bugs faster, so errors do not accumulate; they are tested and fixed without delay which again saves cost and improves overall quality.

In short, taking an agile approach to software development offers businesses a way to really get the most out of their IT spend by avoiding unnecessary waste, and driving business value.

About the author: Lawrence Cawood is Development Lead at Mint Net