Agile project management has quickly become the most popular project management methodology globally – for example it’s now used by over 70% of U.S. companies. Agile emphasizes optimizing your project’s development process by eliminating waste, empowering team members, and prioritizing consistent, continuous improvement.

It’s encouraging employees to take more ownership and responsibility, and to create deliverables that align with your stakeholder’s expectations. If you’re interested in learning more about Agile’s potential, read on to learn about its benefits, how it compares to the popular Waterfall methodology, and why you need to consider scaling with agile project management software.

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What is agile project management?

Agile is a project management methodology that breaks down projects into different stages, or “sprints.” The Agile methodology focuses on delivering different stages of a project, instead of the whole project in one go.

Additionally, this methodology does not typically have a central project manager. Instead, each team member is responsible for communicating with other team members, making sure they’re collaborating properly, and sharing regular updates. 

How does agile project management work?

Agile project management lets teams break down large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. Agile not only helps your team work faster, but it also makes it easier to implement changes in the project lifecycle. That’s because, instead of having to make changes to the entire project, you can collect feedback and adapt each stage as you progress. 

For these reasons, the Agile methodology is popular amongst companies that consistently rely on regular project feedback from stakeholders, like marketing agencies or software firms. 

Agile project management vs. waterfall: comparing methodologies

Agile and Waterfall are two of the most popular project management methodologies. We’ve already discussed what agile is and how it works, but let’s quickly review the waterfall methodology. 

In project management, a Waterfall approach is a linear methodology – you establish clear end-goals and outcomes, and to progress past a phase, you need to complete the deliverables. So, unlike agile, Waterfall offers limited flexibility and is very focused on achieving the goals you established initially. Here’s a table to give you a better understanding of how Agile project management vs. Waterfall compare:
 


Research has found that Agile also boasts as much as a 16% higher success rate than the waterfall methodology, and companies that adopt agile have seen their revenue and profit grow by as much as 60%. But despite the agile framework’s proven effectiveness, some businesses are reluctant to make the switch because:

  1. They’re wary of change. For companies that rely on more traditional project management methods, like Waterfall, Agile is new territory. The idea of restructuring teams and processes, and giving up central control, can be daunting for some businesses.
     
  2. There are training costs involved. If you’re making the switch to agile, you’ll need to upskill your team on the methodology and fundamentally change how employees work and communicate. This process requires time and investment, which can put business leaders off.
     
  3. They fear losing control. Agile has less predictable outcomes and it removes the central ‘project manager,’ so business leaders may fear giving up control. These concerns are quite legitimate – but we can mitigate these risks by training teams to communicate and collaborate well.

6 Benefits of using the agile project management methodology

Thinking of adopting the agile project management methodology? Here are x benefits that it can bring to your business. 

1.   Teams can play to their strengths

Agile project management breaks your projects down into smaller iterations, which means team members can own specific tasks or stages of the product. Additionally, since agile lacks a designated project manager, teams are more empowered to take responsibility for their respective tasks on their own. 

Moreover, since your team members have to work together without the supervision of a project manager, they’re also motivated to take responsibility for collaborating and communicating with each other. So it’s unsurprising that the improved communication and team focus that Agile contributes to a 25% increase in productivity.

2.   Minimizes resource waste

Switching to agile can help you reduce waste substantially, especially if you’re swapping over from Waterfall. Of course, how much you save on resources does depend on your business model, but agile is inherently anti-waste. That’s because:

  1. Agile is iterative. The worst thing you can do is create a product – or project deliverable – that no one wants or has any use for. Agile encourages teams to collect feedback at each stage, which is really important for, say, software companies and marketing agencies.

    For example, if you’re a software team, collecting client feedback as you go along saves you from adding unnecessary features, or failing to add important ones. You can avoid the risk of creating a poor product by putting feedback at the center of development.
     
  2. Agile is adaptive. In the waterfall methodology, the project’s requirements are usually “locked in” at the start. This makes it difficult to prioritize and adapt as you go along. In contrast, agile doesn’t compel teams to freeze their requirements – it assumes that you’ll need to pivot and make adjustments as you go along. 

    So, with agile, you’re less likely to waste time and resources because teams are empowered to adapt when they hit roadblocks.

3.   Quickly identify problems and take corrective action

You can think of each stage of an agile project as a mini waterfall project. So, at the end of each stage, your team submits the deliverable and gets feedback on it. They can work on problem areas (like software bugs) and resolve bottlenecks (like poorly designed ad creatives) before moving forward with the next stage. 

As a result, you don’t end up with a finished product with dozens of issues, because agile encourages teams to take corrective action iteratively. You won’t end up with a final marketing campaign, or a finished software product, that’s ridden with inefficiencies or bugs. 

4.   More flexibility

Agile’s iterative nature affords teams more flexibility in their work. Since teams are responsible for delivering projects in stages, they can adjust the project’s direction at each stage. So if, after working on a project’s initial stages, your team realizes there’s a need to pivot and change priorities, they have the flexibility to do so.

This explanation may sound abstract, so let’s consider a couple of examples.

  1. A marketing agency. Marketing agencies will have different deliverables for each project, including initial strategy and planning, creatives, copy, and more technical aspects like setting up campaigns/advertisements on specific platforms. An agile approach will encourage team members to keep iterating, collecting feedback and testing their outputs to optimize the campaigns. For example, they’ll settle on optimized ad budgets, the best converting creative content and ad copy, etc.
     
  2. A software development team. A software team that uses agile will work closely with their client/internal stakeholders to understand their needs. The team will identify the most important features and prioritize them, to avoid wasting any effort. They’ll break the project down into different stages, assign responsibilities, and get started with development.

    Now, as they develop the app’s features, they’ll loop stakeholders in to make sure the features meet their expectations. Team members will also meet each other to review progress and identify any bottlenecks.

    The result? Products will be delivered quicker, and you’ll avoid developing any unnecessary features (or missing important ones).

5.   Predict and mitigate risks

If your teams follow a pre-defined process and path, their response to change will be slower, decreasing productivity and costing them opportunities to innovate. However, agile’s collaborative and iterative nature helps you get ahead of potential risks and respond quickly.

Since agile projects operate in stages, teams discuss and address emerging risks as they arise. Agile teams are more collaborative in nature, so teams can, say, discuss potential risks and problems in their daily meetings. Addressing any challenges, or potential threats, quickly, helps teams resolve them before they compound. 

6.   Deliver top products – faster

Since agile is inherently feedback-orientated, you don’t risk building a product that no one wants to use, or has no use for. You won’t end up with a finished product that lacks necessary features, has too many unnecessary features, or is difficult and unintuitive to use. 

So, agile not only helps you build customer-centric products, but it also saves you time, since you avoid building any unnecessary features. Unsurprisingly, 54% of companies surveyed in the sixteenth annual State of Agile report chose “accelerate time to market” as a reason for prioritizing Agile practices. 

5 Reasons to consider software for agile project management

If you’re considering adopting Agile, then it’s worth considering agile project management software (or any project management software that supports Agile, really). And here’s why.

1.   Improve collaboration and communication 

Agile encourages team members to take responsibility for their tasks and stages of the project lifecycle, and project management software helps teams collaborate better by increasing their visibility. If you’re dependent on another team member’s work, or are collaborating with them, you can use project management software to view their progress and see when you need to pitch in.

Additionally, many project management tools include built-in collaboration features. They let you leave comments, assign tasks to team members, and some even let you message people 1:1. 

2.   Track and visualize project progress

Agile project management software and project management tools, in general, let you visualize project timelines, track progress at each stage, and manage resources. Since Agile projects progress in ‘sprints,’ you’ll want to check in whenever a stage is complete, collecting feedback and deciding how best to progress. The visualization that these tools offer helps teams stay on track and meet project deadlines. 

3.   Reporting and analytics

Reporting and analytics features help teams both when:

  1. A project is underway. Your reporting and analytics features that project management tools offer help you track the real-time progress of each sprint, so you can identify bottlenecks, quantify progress, and track productivity. When problems arise, team members will have the visibility to act quickly.
  2. A project, or a stage of the project, is complete. Since Agile is iterative, team members reflect on their progress at the end of each sprint and look for ways to optimize their workflow.

    Reporting and analytics features give them insights into their performance and productivity to help them improve. For example, granular data like the time spent on individual tasks lets team members know where they spent most of their time, and whether there are opportunities to improve efficiency. 

4.   Help teams work more effectively

Software tools not only help your team members collaborate better, but through the power of workflow automation, they also free employees up to work on more valuable tasks. You can integrate important platforms (like your project management tool with your email automation software/CRM, calendar, etc.) and automate tasks across them, saving time and improving efficiency. 

For example, you can leverage automation triggers to assign responsibilities based on a team member’s role and availability, or you can automatically create a list of tasks and to-dos for new projects (e.g., do you need to onboard the new client?). You can also automate:

  • Time spent evaluation, to see which projects are taking up most of your time, and how productive team members are.
  • Reporting, to keep stakeholders in the loop and update them automatically after each sprint.

Learn more about project roles and responsibilities here.

5.   Scalability

Agile may intuitively seem difficult to scale, because of the lack of central accountability and the adaptive nature of each project. But adequate project management software helps you put the right infrastructure in place, ensuring you can scale well.

Agile is really about empowering your team members to take ownership and providing them with the tools they need to work well. And to understand how project management tools facilitate this, let’s consider a team member’s workflow. 

When your company is managing multiple projects, you may have employees that are working on more than one project. In each project, they may have similar (or different) responsibilities. But since each project develops in ‘sprints’, the employee just needs enough visibility into each to manage their time every day. The software lets team members track deadlines, responsibilities, and the development life cycle for each project, so they can organize their workflow accordingly.

Project management software also streamlines communication and gives teams complete visibility into every project. The infrastructure sets you up for scaling successfully. 

 

Caflou – A specialized business and project management software for Agile teams

Looking to implement and scale Agile project management in your company? Caflou can help you out.

Manage your entire Agile project lifecycle

Caflou’s built-in project management features let you manage your entire project management lifecycle. Assign responsibilities, track productivity, create tasks and dependencies, collaborate with team members, and leverage advanced analytics to optimize after each sprint. 

Track productivity and progress

Are your projects set to meet their timelines? Are your team members working effectively, or are some of them being weighed down by bottlenecks? Caflou gives you complete, real-time visibility into your projects’ progress.

Automate repetitive tasks

Leverage Caflou’s workflow automation builder to automate repetitive tasks, and for complex automation needs, take advantage of our integration with Make. Free your team up from repetitive tasks and set your projects up to scale. 

Interested in supercharging your business with Caflou? Try it for free today.

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