How to implement agile methodologies in your business

Published Tuesday 30 July 2024

What is agile project management?

Agile project management completes work in an iterative and incremental way. It values individuals and interactions, working products, customer collaboration and satisfaction, and responding to change.

While traditional project management models involve rigid planning, predictability, and significant ‘launches’ of work, agile methodologies prioritise collaboration, flexibility, and innovation to drive business efficiency.

Agile methodology steps commonly include phases of planning, designing, developing, testing, deploying, and reviewing the business’s products or services.

Which business types can benefit from agile methodologies?

Many businesses can benefit from agile project methodology. You can apply it to most projects across industries:

• That involve ongoing deliverables and phased planning
• Where requirements are not yet certain
• Where there is close engagement with customers

Agile project development is popular in software businesses, but also in engineering, construction, advertising, finance and banking, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, and government.

Agile principles support the development of productive teams that can manage rapid change, iterative development and incremental delivery.

The 12 agile principles in business

There are 12 agile principles in business – also called the ‘agile manifesto’:

Early and continuous delivery

This principle prioritises the customer by delivering value to them early and then continuously improving it. One way to apply this principle is to use customer feedback to modify and improve your product or service.

Responding to changing requirements

Agile teams embrace change, even in late stages of a project. Responding to changing customer needs and shifts in the market helps businesses innovate and stay competitive.

Frequent delivery

Agile businesses regularly improve their products or services to enhance quality, mitigate risk, gather feedback early, and stay competitive.

Close collaboration

Agile working emphasises collaboration across all areas of the business. Connecting regularly – such as by holding daily standup meetings – encourages transparency and discussion of important issues. This helps people make decisions and stay aligned between a project’s goals and its implementation.

Motivated team members

Motivated teams find creative solutions, produce higher-quality outputs and get the job done. Teams are motivated when they work in a supportive environment for teams by ensuring they have the support and trust to make decisions, move fast and innovate.

Face-to-face communication

Direct communication unifies a team and helps to minimise misunderstandings. Cross-functional teams that regularly connect in person can find solutions and share expertise quickly.

Working product is the primary measure of progress

This agile principle puts tangible outputs and meaningful results first. Agile teams regularly review products or services to make sure they meet customer needs and achieve business objectives. This helps them maintain trust with customers and stakeholders and keeps them competitive in the market.

Sustainable development

Agile frameworks support ongoing and indefinite improvement. It’s crucial to build a workflow that allows team members and stakeholders to work at a steady pace over time. This supports a healthy work-life balance and lessens the risk of burnout.

Technical excellence and good design

Striving for technical excellence and good design encourages teams to adapt quickly to new requirements, design scalable solutions, and focus on the customer.

Embracing simplicity

This principle advocates low complexity and eliminating unnecessary work. This enhances efficiency and focuses teams and resources on critical tasks that add real value for customers and the business.

Self-organising teams

An agile business empowers its teams to make decisions, innovate, own the work and apply their expertise and creativity. Promoting self-organised teams fosters investment in projects and optimises resources to meet business and customer needs.

Regular reflection and improvement

One of the key benefits of agile working is continuous improvement to the product or service. Teams must set aside time to reflect on successes and find ways to boost efficiency and change behaviours.

The different types of agile frameworks

There are several agile frameworks that apply specific approaches to project planning, management, and delivery.

Scrum

Scrum is a simple framework that helps businesses tackle complex problems and diverse tasks.

Scrum organises work into short cycles with specific deadlines, known as ‘sprints’, that typically last between two and four weeks.

The framework assigns clear roles – such as the product owner, scrum master, and development team – and encourages collaboration.

Teams deliver results and adjust priorities quickly in a ‘structured yet flexible’ environment. They can respond to changes in the market or customers’ needs by reviewing work after each sprint.

Note that regular collaboration takes time and buy-in from the whole team. Teams should remember to keep long-term objectives in sight, as sprints can encourage a focus on short-term goals.

Kanban

The Japanese word 'kanban' translates roughly as ‘signboard’ ‘visual card’. Kanban organises tasks into visual cues on a physical or digital board, signalling when tasks are started, underway, or complete.

A kanban board provides a great overview of work underway to achieve business goals. It helps teams visualise workflow, track progress, identify bottlenecks, and centralise information on work deliverables. And by showing the work in progress, teams are encouraged to complete tasks before starting new ones.

Kanban depends on teams being organised in their time management. Otherwise, teams could struggle with task overload and the kanban minimalist structure.

Extreme programming (XP)

XP is a less-regimented agile framework that emphasises regular releases of work in short sprints.

XP allows businesses to deliver results and make changes fast. Teams work in short bursts to produce quality output, satisfy customer needs and keep product backlog low. Rapid change can also reduce costs over time by eliminating the need for major updates.

While XP enables continuous improvement and fast project development, XP can:

• Be resource intensive
• Take lots of effort, collaboration and creativity, and rapid feedback from the customer to be successful

Traditional vs agile project management methodologies

Traditional project management is linear – it follows a strict plan towards a clearly defined target. The phases of research, scope, design, and development happen one after the other, and teams provide management and support after launching. This method – the ‘waterfall’ approach – relies on the predictability of people, tools, and outcomes in each phase.

Agile project methodology is cyclical, emphasising adaptability, flexibility, and evolution of a product or service towards a target. Teams learn and adapt across the lifecycle of the product or service. Working in sprints, they continue to develop, test, and review after launching.

The benefits of using agile techniques in business

These include:

• Teams have the space to adapt, learn, and respond to change quickly and effectively
• Faster releases deliver value to the customers quickly, improving customer satisfaction
• Working in an iterative way improves quality
• Regular collaboration improves team dynamics and strong communication, including with stakeholders
• Delivering updates in sprints improves risk management across the project

How to implement agile methodologies in your business

To bring agile project management to your business you need training, multidisciplinary team structure, clear roles and iterative working.

1: Educate and train your team

Start by introducing your team to agile methodologies, their purpose, and their benefits. You could start by running an introductory workshop to discuss agile principles and how they’ll improve your business. Real-life examples might help your team visualise this.

After that, offer training or workshops to get everyone up to speed with agile practices and tools.

2: Choose an agile framework

Find an agile framework that best suits your business needs (see above) By assessing the strengths of the frameworks above against your business goals and team capabilities.

Keep in mind the resource requirements for these frameworks. For example, XP methodology requires a robust team and regular collaboration.

3: Form cross-functional teams

Cross-functional teams help you optimise collaboration, creativity and problem-solving in your projects.

Create small teams that include members with various skills and expertise. This allows your agile teams to manage different aspects of a project independently, and access expertise outside of their skill set quickly and regularly.

To help these teams succeed, you’ll also need to support and foster a work culture of collaboration, learning, and self-management.

4: Define roles and responsibilities

Clearly define roles within your agile teams. Typical roles in Scrum, for example, include the product owner, scrum master, and development team.

Make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how they’ll contribute to the team's success.

5: Plan work in iterations

Using the principles of your chosen framework, divide the project into chunks and plan the work in sprints or iterations. Use tools that help your team operate in an agile environment, such as a digital kanban board.

Carry out regular reviews to share and showcase completed work, gather feedback, and make changes. Your reviews should generate actionable insights as part of continuous improvement.

How to measure your success with agile KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you track your team’s progress and the effectiveness of agile techniques.

Some examples of KPIs in agile practice include:

• Sprint burndown: a chart showing the work completed in a sprint, and the time left to complete the rest of the work
• Productivity: measured by the length and success of your sprint cycles
• Team satisfaction and stability: measured through a staff survey, for example
• Quality of outputs: measured by collating customer feedback on the team’s efforts

Can software help manage agile teams?

Software gives agile teams plenty of support. The right digital tools can:

• Enable teams to develop and evolve agile practices
• Reduce administrative burdens
• Create opportunities for communication
• Store project and sprint information centrally
• Track your progress with visual support, such as a project dashboard or kanban

Some project management tools that allow for agile working are Jira, Trello, Asana, and Monday. Make sure to Choose software that suits your team’s and business’s needs.

Agile principles FAQs

1. Is agile suitable for non-IT projects?

While agile workflows are commonly used for IT projects, they’re also useful in other industries where teams need to manage and execute complex projects. These include:

• Marketing and advertising
• Manufacturing
• Engineering and construction
• Finance and banking
• Healthcare and pharmaceuticals

Agile methodologies can be used for projects that require planning, design, testing and release over a product or service lifecycle.

2. How can you manage agile teams remotely?

Although agile working favours face-to-face connection and collaboration some best practices for managing remote teams using agile methodologies are to:

• Hold regular, open communication over video, phone and messaging to foster collaboration
• Use digital collaboration tools like Zoom, Asana, and Google Meets
• Ensure each team member understands the goals and outcomes of each sprint
• Set clear expectations for each team and team member
• Acknowledge achievements and completion of tasks and goals
• Encourage autonomy and flexibility in your team to achieve the tasks and outcomes of each sprint

3. Can sole traders use agile methodologies?

While agile typically applies to teams and larger projects, you can still work with an agile mindset and approach as a sole trader.

• Choose the agile methodology that best suits your business,
• Organise your tasks into sprints or iterations
• Focus on continuous improvement and adaptation

You could use a digital tool that guides your agile working and provides visual support, such as a kanban board.