We hear the word “agile” too often these days, even outside the development field. This methodology has become so popular that it spread to project management, marketing, training, and even human operations.

Agile skills are what businesses seek in developers and what shapes a developer’s cost. Because if you type “how much to hire a programmer” in Google, you’ll see that the costs differ a lot depending on programmers’ hard and soft skills.

In comparison to traditional ways of working, Agile allows to focus more on customers’ needs. It makes us more flexible and pushes us to deliver quicker. These are exactly the trends we see developing together with new technologies. They require new approaches from us for accomplishing tasks. Let’s see what Agile best practices exist today, which we can apply for more effective development.

Popular Agile Best Practices in Development

Companies build their workflow around Agile practices for several reasons. This approach helps to solve the main challenges teams experience. These are the flexibility of project delivery, communication, and adaptability to changes, to name just a few.

In their report, Agile Sherpas state that on average, teams using Agile principles are 25% more productive than those using traditional methods.

Here are the most widespread Agile development practices that stand from the crowd:

Prioritization and Task Management

The whole development process is dependent on the tasks we have for the final product. In Agile, all tasks are gathered into the product backlog. This helps to build the prioritization ladder and work on the most critical tasks first. As the Agile best practices show, prioritization allows delivering the important features required by the customer. They are usually defined as those bringing more business value and being more critical to implement. The backlog should be adjustable, responsive to the customers’ feedback and needs.

Sprint Planning

The idea of working with sprints is to divide the working flow into smaller pieces and deliver continuously, improving on the go. Each sprint can take from one to four weeks and include critical tasks only for this period of time. There are three main benefits of splitting the workflow like this:

• Deliver in small batches, and not only after the project is accomplished.
• Continuously gather feedback and improve the development, if needed.
• Actively collaborating with all parties involved, at the same time clearly defining the goals and responsibilities for each.

Acceptance of Changing Requirements

You know how cumbersome and long the development can be. And as the project evolves, the requirements at the beginning rarely remain exactly the same by the end. The benefit of using Agile practices is that by splitting the workflow into smaller pieces, you leave space for changes.

Forbes also mentions the involvement of the customers, which shape the requirements along the progress of the software development. This mutual cooperation and adaptability to the circumstances give a more efficient product at the end. Because, let’s agree, correcting something on the go is less time-consuming than redeveloping everything from scratch.

Continuous Improvement

This practice is closely linked to the previous one. The continuous improvement relates to development, integration, and deployment at the same time. Widely used in automation, this phase helps to streamline the development, reducing risks of errors.

After every sprint or a new developed feature, the continuous integration allows to proactively detect any issues and improve them for the next sprints. Besides, it has a direct impact on the deployment and the final software product.

Iterative Delivery

Splitting the work into sprints is not only beneficial for planning, but also for delivering. Organizing daily stand-up meetings allows seeing what piece of the development is stuck, requires support, or has any other blockers. Releasing the software in batches also allows receiving the feedback from the customer or the end user.

That’s why businesses prefer building the project flow on Agile practices. They continuously receive deliverables in small batches, monitor the progress, and are involved in continuous improvement.

Benefits of Agile Practices

International Agile Federation predicts that in 2024 Agile will continue topping the trends, spreading to more and more industries outside development. Its success is undeniable, and that’s for a reason. Here are some of the main advantages you get while implementing Agile principles:

• Better project control. With regular sprints, you have the possibility to monitor the progress of software development. This in turn leads to transparency and improved risk management.
• Reduced waste. You build the working process in such a way that more important features come first. As a result, you deliver what brings value, making the whole project more effective.
• Increased customer satisfaction. As working in iterations involves customers’ feedback, you implement improvements as you develop. The customer becomes more satisfied.
• Better software quality. As you practice continuous improvement, you constantly elaborate your development and the final version of the software.
• Reduced time to market. The software delivery accelerates as you split it into smaller, manageable tasks. As a result, businesses release a product quicker to the market.

Wrapping Up

If you want to go for effective solutions for your project delivery, Agile principles are something to consider. However, even as they bring numerous benefits, it’s not a unique and the only “one-size-fits-all” approach. Agile methods leverage your competitiveness in the market, as you deliver products quicker. But you need to ensure you follow its main principles. Some critical ones include continuous improvement, learning from feedback, and prioritizing collaboration. Elevate your business with professional web design from Endertech.

You should continue to invest in training your teams, refining their Agile practices, and fostering a culture that values adaptability and teamwork. This way, you will stay ahead in the fast-evolving world of software development.