Blog

07

Feb

5 Tips to Make Your Company More Agile Friendly

In today’s fast-paced business world, efficiency, flexibility and adaptability are keys to success.

As we discussed last time Using the Agile Methodology to Drive Business Forward, an agile approach to projects can be vital to keeping your company ahead of the competition.

The agile methodology is more flexible and iterative than the traditional waterfall approach to projects, allowing teams to assess and address problems throughout the development process, rather than at the end. As a result, the iterative aspect of the agile methodology can improve a company’s outcomes, drastically cutting costs and time to market.

You may be saying, “Sure, the benefit to implementing an agile methodology is a no-brainer, but how do I make my company more agile friendly?”

The ultimate goal is to take a more organic approach to project development and avoid the rigid top-down structures of the past. Empowering your development team, encouraging them to work together and instituting frequent short meetings are some changes that can help create a more agile-friendly environment.

Here are five tips that can help make your business more agile friendly:

1. Frequent Meetings: Instituting regular, even daily, meetings allows small project teams to share progress, discuss problems that arise and work out solutions.

2. Promote Inclusiveness: Members of your project development team should be equals and given an equal opportunity to contribute. Team members should share actions, avoiding a reliance on a single person.

3. Eliminate Top-Down Hierarchy: This is not to say do away with your company’s organizational structure, but, during projects, the goal should be for work to be done by self-organizing teams. Management’s role should be to encourage and enable the team to do its work unimpeded.

4. Embrace Iterative Work Cycles: One of the benefits to the agile methodology is that frequent iterations are deployed throughout the project cycle. This means project feedback will come directly from the customers and issues or problems can be addressed throughout development.

5. Choose the Right Project Management Team or Tool: The right personnel using the right tools will help keep your company’s projects on-track and properly evolving. It may be necessary to seek out an experienced team or personnel to quickly implement an agile-friendly environment.

Denysys Corporation can help you build an agile-friendly approach, with team members that keep a constant eye on the market in order to build systems designed for speed, steering and opportunity.