Agile Software Development is the preferred development methodology by software companies and clients alike. Essentially, Agile development accelerates the delivery of business value. Through a process of dividing the project into sprints, continuous planning, and feedback, the value of the business is maximized. The iterative nature of Agile allows the teams to continuously align the delivered software with desired business needs, easily accommodating to changing requirements throughout the process. Clients have visibility to the actual progress of the projects through continuous measurement, accurate work reports, and software testing. As a result, the software system better addresses the business and its final customers. And this is just an overview. From our experience of working with Agile and from our partner’s feedback, we selected the top ten benefits of Agile software development. Give it a look to find more.

1. Stakeholders control

In Agile development, the client is involved in every phase of the project. The Agile method provides communication opportunities before, during and after each sprint. This leads to a better collaboration between the client and the development team. Therefore, the client has more opportunities to express their view and for the team to understand it. The misunderstandings are cleared early in the project and the constant interaction helps the customer to visualize the functionality that is coming based on having seen what was built so far.

What is more, the customers develop a better understanding of their own needs and the vocabulary to express it to the developers. It also allows them to identify when their needs change. In this way, the stakeholders can ensure that the developers are building what they wanted. The team can offer client something tangible after each sprint, so stakeholders can remain in control of their product. Delivering working software frequently increases clients’ trust in the software’s company ability to deliver high-quality working software. This is how the long-term partnerships are built.

2. Speed-to-market

The incremental delivery nature of Agile software development and the scrum methodology philosophy support early and regular releases. Practically, the software product is continually improved while being on the market and delivering revenue for the customers. New features are delivered quickly and frequently. Basically, it provides the opportunity to release or beta test the software earlier than planned. This enables the client to realize benefits early, as the product continues to develop.

3.  Better Quality Software

Agile means the project is divided into smaller pieces of work. These are more manageable, allowing the team to focus on high-quality development. Moreover, by producing frequent bids that are tested and reviewed after each iteration the quality is improved.  The bugs are detected and fixed early on, so the same mistake won’t be reiterated and won’t affect the overall quality of the project. Summed up, a high-quality Agile software product is: fit for purpose, fit for use, lacks defects, is reliable and maintainable.

4. On time & On budget

Agile allows good control of spendings. Because each Sprint has estimated hours the cost is predictable and limited to the amount of work that can be performed by the team in the fixed time schedule. Also, the client can more easily understand the approximate cost of each feature, which improves decision making about the priority of features and the need for additional iterations.

5. Flexibility for change

In traditional development, big specs are written and explained to the business owners, explaining how expensive changes are. In Agile development change is not only accepted, is expected. We know that software project can face changes during the development process. Some features might need to be added, other upgraded, or even some of them can become obsolete. The Agile methodology allows you to adapt to your fast-changing needs even during the development process. The schedule is fixed and requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed. With each iteration, you have an opportunity to reprioritize and adjust activities from the backlog. The new or modified backlog items can be planned for the next phases, with the opportunity to be implemented just after a few weeks.

6. Risk limitations

Intermediate releases of the product mean that flaws and bugs can be detected and fixed early on. Also, the transparency that Agile development stands for, offers the stakeholders the possibility to take crucial decisions for the course of their project at a moment where is still time to take critical decisions for the business.

7. Transparency

Forget about the phrase ”I don’t know what the developers are doing”. With Agile, the client has access to the progress of the project. He can check the status of the project at each stage, benefits from intermediary release and has regular meetings with the team. Stakeholder has access to information about hours worked on each task, can see the eventual delays and the explanations for them. Also, he can see intermediate phases of the product to ensure that the expectations are effectively managed.

8. Predictable delivery

By using fixed schedule, one-week long sprints, new features are delivered rapidly and frequently. Intermediate delivery and beta-versions are deployed before the end of the project.

9. Delivers business value

The client can establish the priority of features. In this way, the team knows what’s the most important for client’s business, so they prioritize those things first. The critical bugs are fixed first, the essential elements implemented, so the product can be ready for delivery, eventually in a beta phase earlier than the final release date.

10. User-oriented

In the end, what matters most is making happy the end customer, the real beneficiary of the software project. Basically, each feature incrementally delivers value for customers. Based on customers feedback, certain components and functionalities can be added, bugs fixed or additional feature developed. And these lead to new development sprints. This way, the software project is constantly updated and obtains business value.

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From Clarisoft Technologies’ long-term experience with Agile development, we can definitely say that this methodology is the one that allows us to deliver business value to our clients, with a higher degree of customer satisfaction. Also, it is the most natural solution for complex software development projects that change over time and need to be divided into segments. It resolves most of the communication issues with the stakeholders, while they can keep a close eye on their project during development. It also facilitates a long-term relationship with the client, who can count on our services to constantly add business value to their software project.

If you require software development services and your needs seem to be suited by the benefits of Agile software development, contact us and we’ll give you the best solutions.