Agile in the New Normal: How Remote Work is Changing the Landscape?

Agile in the New Normal: How Remote Work is Changing the Landscape

Traditional development methodologies are slowly getting obsolete. Nowadays, most businesses are adopting agile software development methodology. Once, introduced as a revolutionary step in the IT industry, Agile has now become the new normal. This successful journey for Agile has been fuelled by its key features and amazing benefits. Agile came in as an alternative to previously used development methodologies such as the Waterfall methodology.

Before Agile came into the game, Waterfall methodology was the standard development protocol used worldwide. It involved a whole lot of documentation even before the development starts. The introduction of Agile methodology exposed that the former was a quite slow approach to handling software development projects. Agile development methodology came with four foundational principles:

• More focus on software working than documentation
• Prioritizing team collaboration over tools, techniques, and processes
• Continuous customer collaboration rather than abruptly changing requirements
• Responsiveness to changes during the development cycle

All these four principles focus on making the development cycle more efficient, flexible, and customer friendly. Now, let us discuss how Agile grew in popularity and became the primary choice for most software development companies across the globe.

How Agile Came into the New Normal?

With rapid changes and rising competition in the global market, every business organization is trying to become more flexible and efficient. Agile has proved these companies with a suitable platform to attain the required level of efficiency and flexibility. A whole lot of development methodologies passed through the market over all these years. No one remembers even the names of most of them. But Agile came, stayed, and made its mark.

The following are the reasons why agile software development methodology has become so popular and become the new normal:

1.Agile is customer friendly

All the best practices incorporated within agile methodology are oriented to deliver quality across the enterprise. The primary objective of this approach is to deliver products to the clients on time and make them happy. Happy and satisfied clients boost your reputation as a business and eventually help your company grow. Customers are completely involved throughout the development process. This ensures that the product meets all the initial requirements.

2.It is fast

Agile is faster in comparison to other software development methods that work on the pre-designed process with customer requirements fixed right in the beginning. Through this methodology, the team is allowed to focus on planning the development, designing the software, building the product, testing, and result delivery. The whole project is divided into smaller sprints that make it easier for the developer to design, develop, and deploy them stepwise. Eventually, the process takes a lot less time than the traditional methodologies.

3.Agile enhances productivity

Agile creates a culture within the organization that focuses on enhancing productivity. This methodology promotes transparency throughout the team operations. This makes it easier for everyone to understand the iteration goals clearly. As a result, team coordination gets enhanced and does productivity.

Along with all these three features, Agile builds better trust among developers, stakeholders, and customers. Furthermore, the INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small stories, and Testable) factor also plays a crucial role.

How Remote Working Has Changed the Approach of Agile Software Development Services

The exponential increase in the popularity of agile and remote work, both came in trend more or less at the same time. It is just like combining the two contemporary trends. However, remote work became a necessity for most companies when the Covid pandemic hit the world in different waves. Each wave hit the corporate structure harder than the previous one. The only two options left to carry on business operations were either to work remotely or not work at all.

Luckily, the majority of problems faced by agile teams during remote work are easily addressable. Moreover, if a robust IT infrastructure is in place to empower the remote working team. The team can perform just as efficiently as they would do as co-located teams. Agile empowers organizations to aim for faster and less hierarchical decision-making, increased team autonomy, and flexibility. Also, it enables teams to deliver more innovative solutions in times of uncertainty.

Remote work was already prevalent in quite a few organizations even before 2019-20. It is just that the pandemic accelerated the shift towards remote working by making it a mandatory step in order to survive as a business. Agile software development services caught up with this sudden shift efficiently and didn’t let it create a gap at all.

Agile made remote working quite straightforward and poised for maximum output. Some organizations would even say that remote working actually increased the outputs of their teams working on the agile development methodology.