10 Agile Guidelines for Improving your Scrum Projects

This article aims to illustrate the Agile practices and provide guidance to agile team on adopting Agile for implementation of IT systems. It was developed based on common Agile practices in the industry and the experiences gained from the various pilot projects.

1. Fit-for-purpose products. Starting with an MVP and building on it incrementally lets customers see the emerging product and tweak it where necessary. Thus converging on the best possible outcome and delivering a product that really does the business.
2. Faster time to market. No more endless waiting for a product that’s past its sell-by date before it even arrives. The MVP gets a working product out of the door faster with add-ons following thick and fast.
3. An early return on investment (ROI). A base product is delivered quickly and enables benefits to be realized early on as the product continues to develop. The return starts sooner and builds from there. This achieves a much quicker ROI.
4. Flexibility. The one thing that’s certain in life is change. Instead of putting on the change control manacles and swimming against the tide, agile embraces change and even encourages it. This is much better aligned with the natural way of (business) life.
5. Less risk. Starting smaller and building from there reduces the risk of outright failure enormously. On the rare occasions that things do go a bit pear shaped, they can be fixed at a reasonable cost. Even minor disasters happen quickly and inexpensively.
6. High visibility. Agile provides excellent visibility for key stakeholders regarding both progress and the emerging product itself. Continuous involvement and collaboration means no more project silos or no-go areas.
7. Greater efficiency. Continuous improvement is a key part of a reflective agile culture. Widely publicized metrics are used to measure performance and teams are continually on the lookout for ways to do things. Faster, cheaper, better is the mantra but not at the expense of the quality of deliveries.
8. Predictability. A successful outcome is pretty much guaranteed: the business will get what it wants. Positive results are realized in the short term and this promotes a winning attitude. Success breeds confidence and leads to even more success, thus creating a virtuous circle.
9. Satisfied customers. Whatever criteria is applied to analyzing customer satisfaction, expect tangible improvements early on. All and everything agile should make this a total no-brainer so be wary if the feedback is anything less than glowing. This is the ultimate litmus test.
10. Better culture and morale. Last but certainly not least, the end result of this is happy bunnies all round. A happy vibe in the business and self-satisfied grins in the project teams. This leads to a happier workforce and a winning culture where successful projects, not failures, are the norm.

References

Scrum articles for beginners