Adopting and Improving Agile Development

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Pandemic Pressure

The pandemic of the early 2020s has reduced person-to-person contact between businesses and their customers. Many customers demand alternatives to endless online meetings or long wait times for overloaded call centers. Some businesses have compensated by replacing specific cases of in-person contact with online services and information. 

For more about adapting to demand for online services during the pandemic, see Accelerated Expectations.

Adopting an Agile Mindset

Businesses facing accelerated demand for more online services need agile software development to quickly deliver those services to their customers. Executives who have not adopted agile development have probably heard stories of it reducing release times from months to weeks. They want the benefit of quick software releases that adapt to customer needs. Yet, are they prepared to adopt an agile mindset?

Mind the Gaps

A business analyst can help executives decide whether adopting an agile mindset is worth its time and energy investment. He or she finds the gaps between the business’s current development approach and agile development.

For example, agile development typically requires a business stakeholder take on a product owner role, making sure a solution delivers value. The business analyst defines the role, looking for business stakeholders motivated to fulfill the role. If no stakeholder wants to commit to the role, it creates a gulf between the business and agile development.

The business analyst gives an overview of how an agile development team works. The team needs management to provide clear direction to what they should achieve and remove any obstacles along the way. Once the development team aligns with management’s direction, they work autonomously. If the business wants to continue top-down management of subordinates, the business analyst notes a gap with the agile mindset.

The business analyst emphasizes the key benefit of agile development - delivering software that rapidly adapts to changing requirements. The fine-grained nature of agile development delivers software more frequently, with increments of functionality showing what’s changed. This enables business stakeholders to preview the software and offer feedback to the product owner and development team. Business stakeholders expecting to see all their problems solved in the first release indicate another gap.

The business analyst points out the gaps between the business’s current software development process and agile development, ideally with the help of a business ally. Adopting an agile mindset requires closing the gaps. Some businesses may find this challenging, but agile development has proven to be the best way to deal with rapidly changing requirements.

Agile Success Requires Agile Adoption

A business does not need to adopt agile development all at once - in fact, that goes against agile’s fine-grained nature. The business should set up an agile pilot project in a low-risk area.  

For example, a business has a large-scale plan to streamline customer service with automation.  Faced with growing demand for online services, they accelerate the plan, adopting agile. They pilot a solution providing documents and videos, answering common questions seen by service representatives. This has low operational impact and lower risk, making it easier to assess agile development’s impact. 

Once a small agile pilot delivers its solution, stakeholders review what went well and what could improve. They take on larger initiatives, each with frequent releases, stakeholder feedback, and incremental improvements to the process as well as the software. Ideally, this turns into a virtuous cycle, with continually improving development delivering solutions that rapidly adapt to customer needs.

A business analyst can help businesses adopt agile development by showing the benefits of agile software development and the investment in changing to an agile mindset.

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Business Analysis with Agile Software Development