Picture a surfer, Tyler riding a friendly rolling wave at Huntington Beach, California just favorable enough for an intermediate surfer like Tyler.
Without warning, a dumping wave sets in, challenging all of Tyler’s carefully practiced skills. These waves are a bit more unpredictable for experienced surfers. What would Tyler do?
Many industries once faced the same experience as Tyler, only this time, the waves represented the business operating environment.
Used to a stable business environment, businesses adopted the traditional project management approach.
However, a dumping wave set in. Business is no longer “business as usual” and the environment becomes increasingly dynamic. Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA).
In a bid to remain competitive, businesses have resorted to various methodologies to deliver value in the face of dumping waves.
Agile development is one of the most popular techniques employed because of its ability to break down different phases of projects into smaller phases to drive continuous improvement.
This article focuses on the Comparison between Agile and Traditional Project Management, Agile in software development, and Agile for non software teams.
What is Agile?
Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that makes it easier for the team to work together to deliver value to consumers more quickly and effectively.
With a wide array of project management techniques and tools, Agile methodology has proven to be one of the most effective for project management and software development.
It ensures that feedback can be acted upon swiftly and responsive changes can be made at each sprint to optimize value added to consumers.
Agile methodology is an approach that breaks down projects into smaller iterations known as sprints.
After each sprint, the Agile team made up of empowered generalizing specialists works together to collaborate on feedback from consumers that can be acted upon for the next sprint.
This incremental process makes Agile a more flexible, adaptive, and lightweight project management methodology.
Agile is an umbrella term for various methodologies including Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Lean, Kanban, and others operating under the Agile Manifesto.
The Agile Manifesto comprises four core values outlined below:
1. Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools.
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation.
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
4. Responding to change over following a plan.
These values are incorporated into these 12 principles listed summarized below:
- The highest priority is to satisfy customers through early, continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in the project.
- Deliver working software frequently, with a preference for shorter timelines.
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motivated individuals, give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective way to communicate within the team is face-to-face.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Maintain a sustainable working pace.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity- the art of maximizing the amount of work not done- is essential.
- The best architecture, requirements, and designs emerge from Self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective and tunes and adjusts accordingly.
Agile vs Traditional Project Management
In the case of Tyler, the surfer mentioned above, various surfing skills are required for various wave intensities.
This principle guides the adoption of either Agile or Traditional Project Management Techniques.
You see, most people argue that Agile is superior, especially nowadays.
However, a more realistic position is to say that either of both can be most beneficial depending on the type of project and operating business environment.
The table below compares both Agile and traditional project management across various perspectives.
| Perspective | Agile | Traditional Project Management |
| Scale Of project | Usually small or medium scale | Large projects |
| Client involvement and Team Collaboration | Very high | Low |
| Documentation | Just barely good enough | Clearly defined |
| Planning | Adaptive planning, value-driven | Plan-driven |
| Business Environment and Requirements | Volatile, dynamic, and rapidly changing | Very stable and predictable |
| Project Delivery | Iterative | Linear |
| Reviews and Approvals | Reviews are done after iterations, with little change control process | Cumbersome change control process |
Benefits of Agile Project Management
Agile project management has proven ideal for companies and businesses that are rapidly evolving.
Common benefits of Agile delivery include:
More Adaptability and Less Risk
One of the greatest benefits of Agile methods is the ability to manage changing requirements even during project delivery.
With Agile’s iterative approach and emphasis on continuous feedback, the project is improved in real time based on the agreed definition of value as specified by the customer.
The short iterations, clearer project visibility, and regular reporting updates, teams can improve project outcomes and progressively de-risk the project.
Greater Customer Satisfaction
You may recall that customer collaboration is one of the four core values of Agile project management.
Agile project management encourages close working relationships between project teams and customers.
As a matter of fact, Extreme Programming (XP) favors the presence of onsite customers throughout project delivery.
Also, because Agile projects focus on technical excellence, various testing, and reviews are executed with each sprint to ensure that with each iteration, value is delivered in the form of working software.
Happier Teams
Agile focuses on self-organizing, and motivated teams that are empowered enough to own project success.
Agile teams are autonomous and granted the freedom to suggest new ideas, innovate, and solve problems that can be lacking in traditional project management methodologies.
The Agile environment is trusting, with the Scrum Master shielding the team from interruptions.
Also, the focus on a sustainable pace helps team members achieve a work-life balance, leading to happier, more productive teams.
Not only that, but the emphasis on collaboration and communication can help to foster more transparent, efficient, creative, and yes, happier teams.
Agile for Software Teams
The Agile manifesto which was published in 2001 is the work of 17 software developers who observed the increasing need for an alternative to documentation-driven software development processes.
As seen in the Principles and core values, it may seem that Agile is only applicable to software development projects.
For example, the principle that working software is the primary measure of progress places emphasis on software.
To further buttress the seeming best fit of Agile to software development, the Agile Methodology of Extreme Programming (XP) revolves around twelve core practices of software development.
These include planning games, simple design, test-driven development, coding standards, refactoring, pair programming, collective code ownership, continuous integration, small releases, system metaphor, onsite customers, and sustainable pace.
From the foregoing, it may appear that Agile is only applicable in software development.
Even though the concept of Agile project management was originally envisioned for software developments, other non-software industries can also key into this Agile approach.
How so? Let’s find out.
Agile for Non Software Teams
The key to non-software teams adopting the Agile approach is for them to view Agile as a mindset and not a set of rules or regulations.
As discussed earlier, Agile methodology is an iterative, incremental approach that encourages feedback from stakeholders and end-user to act quickly and effectively.
It uses collaborative teamwork, backlogs to prioritize tasks, and sprints to decompose work structure into smaller phases.
Let’s now discuss how non-software teams can adopt all of these to stay agile and competitive in today’s world of business.
Continuous Improvement
An important factor in Agile project management is continuous improvement.
In line with Agile principle 12, non-software teams can adopt a retrospective and introspective point of view that allows future strategies to improve by looking back on the previous ones.
What can you learn from the previous projects that will help you improve future ones? That’s pretty much the essence of Agile methodology.
By fostering this mindset, you can ensure continuous improvement for any project, not just software development.
Team members will assess their work, in order to determine what’s working and what’s not, what to continue using, and what to abandon.
That way, each new project is different and slightly better than the previous one. This approach yields long-term benefits for any organization, not just those that develop software.
Leveraging Stakeholder Feedback
Agile projects function based on feedback from stakeholders. This feedback is collected both in a structured and unstructured way, throughout the project.
Non-software industries can also benefit from such feedback.
Having insight from stakeholders during the entire project is far better and more effective than simply having them revise the final product when the changes are either too expensive or too time-consuming to make.
If you’re developing a marketing campaign, you’d be much more successful if somebody for whom the campaign is designed can provide feedback on the work you’ve completed so far.
Whether it’s a customer, client, or any other stakeholder feedback, this can ensure the focus remains on delivering value to the end user, regardless of the nature of the project.
Backlog Prioritization for Value Delivery
In Agile Parlance, a backlog is a set of requirements, typically prioritized for early and maximized value delivery. The backlog is an ordered list of everything that will make a product.
Non-software development teams can apply the Agile principles of prioritization for value delivery by focusing efforts on initiatives that actually move the needle and result in the highest business value.
In adopting this principle, scarce business resources are allocated to backlog based on the value delivered.
Iterative Development
Iterative or evolutionary development is yet another facet of Agile that can benefit non-software industries.
The fact is that Agile is designed to tackle the uncertainty and extreme dynamics of the market. In other words, it allows projects to quickly, easily, and efficiently adapt to any changes in the market.
To put it simply, organizational processes and policies are crafted with room for improvement to support uncertainty.
This is especially beneficial for large-scale enterprise projects where it’s impossible to predict outcomes later in the project before you see how decisions made early on will unravel.
Agile project management eliminates the high-risk scenario of uncertainty and allows projects to adapt to any changes by refining the design as many times as needed.
That way, even such large projects can be made quite seamless.
Agile Adoption for Non-Software Companies
For clarity, let’s use some non-software companies as case studies.
Case study 1: Lonely Planet (Travel Organization)
Lonely Planet is a travel organization that has been in existence for several decades. It has published over 120 million copies of travel books and has over 10 million downloads on its travel app.
The Legal team at Lonely Planet handles the company’s legal work such as managing contracts, and organizational risk, and provides business strategies.
Faced with day-to-day exhaustion from increasing demands and constant rework leading to low morale and rapidly declining job satisfaction, the legal team had a challenge that needed to be solved.
How can the Agile approach be adopted? The answer was Kanban. The whiteboard system was used to show all the deliverables for team members having sections like to-do, doing, and done.
The team then picks up work based on priority. Transparency of information and priorities on the whiteboard helps pick up requests impartially.
The whole team looks at the board end-to-end and continually fine-tunes and makes improvements in the way work is delivered.
Has it proved effective for Lonely Planet’s legal team? Yes. The team records increased productivity by about 25%.
Case Study 2: Construction industry
Agile project management can also be applied in the construction industry. Agile requires first thinking of a project at a strategic level, then breaking it down into smaller tasks (iterations) to ensure consistent delivery.
It also enables you to structure any project to be more adaptive to changes.
Taking an example of a house-building project that you want to be completed in four months. You can easily break this schedule down into two- to four-week sprints (or intervals).
Perhaps the first sprint will be preparing and laying the foundation. The second sprint will involve constructing the rough framing and so on.
By planning and focusing on one sprint at a time, the project remains flexible to unexpected changes such as a sudden change from the client to redesign the master’s bedroom.
Bottom Line
For all companies, software development and otherwise, the common denominator is an uncertain business environment, like the dumping wave experienced by Tyler.
The big question remains, would businesses be responsive to change by adopting an Agile mindset?
