Agile — the new buzz word in modern consulting showing up everywhere. That’s because a lot of companies are experiencing success through agile production, agile startups and agile management practices. The question is — is it worth it?
The agile model is not for every company. The following are some benefits and costs that you can consider before moving to an agile methodology.
Benefit — Increased Corporate Agility
The ability for companies to adapt and, make changes and decision with speed cuts down on costs (time, analysis, implementation) and capitalizes on changing environments where competitors may be lagging.
The quick build, test, analyze cycles give companies ability to validate and fine tune implementations in real time with real user feedback.
In practice the methodology sounds simple, however in practice it takes a great deal of dedication from senior leaders of the company to embrace a culture that supports the methodology.
Costs of Agile Methodology
While there are definitely benefits to the Agile Methodology, there are also costs that need to be considered as well.
The biggest cost is the time, energy and resources associated with changing a company culture to support the methodology, the training to understand the methodology and the implementation of it. Once implemented the cost to introduce new products through agile methodology will have decreased, but setting up the initial systems and processes that will support its effective implementation will take consideration.
Benefit — deliver projects more efficiently
Ultimately, once the methodology has been adopted by an organization, it will be able to deliver projects much more efficiently. This does not necessarily mean the product will be delivered faster, but the ultimate final product delivery will have much higher success rate, and generally much cheaper costs to develop.