Being agile has become a buzzword across all industries. An Agile approach in project management means using an iterative approach when delivering a project. The iterative approach is common in software development. One of the key benefits of the Agile approach is the fact that work is released in shorter cycles rather than all at the end of the project.
Developing a product or a service and taking it to the market has its own set of challenges. Today's business world is fast paced with constant changes. These changes can impact projects and organizations.
Your teams should be flexible and be able to quickly respond to changes. If your team’s slow to respond, then projects can get delayed which may make your organization uncompetitive in the market.
Agile project management focuses on the following:
- Breaks a requirement into smaller pieces
- Visualizing processes so that there’s transparency across the project team and organization
- Collaborative working with internal teams and customers
- Getting feedback as soon as possible
Using the Agile approach allows you to promptly adapt to changes and produce quality products and services that satisfy your customers’ requirements.
Benefits of Agile project management
Here are some benefits that organizations can expect to gain by implementing the Agile methodology:
Better business alignment
The team works closely with the customers in short iterations to produce a valuable and useable deliverable. Due to this, rapid feedback can be incorporated resulting in the customers receiving what they need.
Focus on business value
Agile methods are focused on delivering working software. Priorities can keep changing and an agile approach helps change the backlog priority based on what the customers demand. Being value-focused means that a minor feature may be developed and given to the customer if it delivers more business value and is a priority for the customer.
Shorter delivery cycles
Agile works in shorter iterations. Customers are getting value and benefits delivered faster. The shorter delivery cycles help achieve an earlier return on investment. Tracking the status of tasks in real-time by the customers is another advantage with greater visibility into the project.
Reduced costs
According to Standish’s research, 20% of product features are often used whilst 50% of features are hardly ever or never used in the end product. The Agile approach helps teams develop the most needed features and save time and resources on unwanted features.
Read on: How Vault works with various project management methodologies.
How can Vault help your Agile approach?
Vault can help when managing projects the Agile way:
Agile planning and collaboration
The Agile approach is all about planning for the sprints from your backlog. Plan your team's work by creating schedules and tasks and assigning them with due dates. Increase transparency by sharing the status boards. This allows everyone to see whose working on what which’ll improve team collaboration and communication.
Improve transparency and minimize tracking efforts
Minimize tracking efforts and deliver projects successfully. Create boards and status lists that display the current project status with task-level details. Moreover, assigning tasks to resources and additional alerts enables increased accountability.
View the project status with boards, lists, and tasks. Use To-do, In-progress, Review, and Done statuses.
Real-time data
Real-time dashboards and powerful reports provide actionable insights so you can make informed decisions based on data. Customizable views, reports, and permissions show in-depth insights through drill-down reports.
Track time on tasks
Associate time and costs to tasks using the Time tracking module. View the time spent on each task, the predicted costs versus actual cost, and evaluate results.
Improve communication and collaboration using a centralized platform and a single source of truth. Improve communication by commenting on tasks, high-priority tasks get colored automatically, and tasks assigned to you will have a 'My Task' label. Utilize the Change Log feature and view the audit trail of changes to a task.
KPI dashboard
Track what matters most to your organization by setting up and viewing real-time Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) on dashboards. Discover issues early and take preventive and remedial action. Identify risks and mitigate them early.
Vault has many features that can benefit an agile organization.
Schedule a free consultation to see how Vault can help your business become agile.
