Unlike the traditional waterfall method of web development, Agile is all about rapid prototyping and tight collaboration between the customer and the supplier during all project phases. A typical agile distinctive is to focus on producing the simplest working website immediately after project discovery, and then quickly improve upon this basic version based on actual stakeholder reviews, mock-ups and demos, and usability tests. Agile usually divides development into easily manageable increments or “sprints” with expectations and deliverables clearly defined.
A savvy web application development company may opt to utilize an agile methodology not only because it’s a good option for the dev team, but also for the sake of the business benefits it brings customers. Below are six main reasons why agile development has proven to generally increase client satisfaction within the field. Let’s take a closer look at each of them in turn.
1. Better communication means better understanding
Agile greatly emphasizes direct stakeholder communication, providing many opportunities for customer engagement at each and every project stage. In fact, Agile heavily relies on a client-contractor communication model that’s effective, trusting and conducted in an amicable manner. Because of this emphasis, an agile approach to web development puts the agency in a position to understand the customer’s vision in a much better way, which is key to delivering the exact web product the client needs.
2. Faster time to market
In today’s hypercompetitive business environment, getting your website up and running before your competition does becomes paramount. Because agile web development is focused on eliminating time-wasters and increases efficiency by prototyping, developing and testing almost at the same time, a client gets a working, functional web application in a matter of weeks instead of months. In short, Agile produces early, predictable deliverables, which translates into a reduced time to market and therefore a tangible business value for customers.
3. Increased transparency and trust
An agile web development model provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the stakeholders to take part in decision-making at every step of an agile project. From the discovery stage to setting the priority of various website features to the regular review meetings and frequent new releases – the customer is actively engaged all the way down the road. As a result, the entire process is completely transparent, which builds up trust and enhances collaboration between the parties involved.
4. Better ability to handle change
In the traditional waterfall software development model, the proverbial problems include managing changing software requirements well into the implementation state (or even towards the end of the project!) and the resulting ”scope creep”. By contrast, Agile welcomes change. In fact, change usually means a new and important requirement has been discovered. This doesn’t mean agile web developers aren’t always focused on a timely delivery of an agreed subset of features that have the highest priority. What it does mean is that all the stakeholders have plenty of opportunities to introduce changes along the way, reprioritize old items, and expect deliverables within days or weeks, depending on the complexity of the task.
5. Enhanced risk management
By getting constant customer feedback, Agile reduces the risk of building a product no one wants or needs. An agile, iteration-based approach to web development doesn’t treat risk management as a separate area to be dealt with. In a certain sense, Agile is risk management. For the customer, this also means you can cut your losses early if you realize the project has little or no market value or insufficient user demand.
6. Improved quality of the resulting product
With Agile, continuously focusing on the actual customer needs and delivering them in the most valuable order goes to the heart of the method itself, thus increasing business value for the client. And incorporating feedback from mock-ups and usability reviews while constantly testing new features means expectation mismatches are discovered early and critical bugs get fixed in time.
Agile web development methodology is a great way to mitigate or eliminate many common project risks, including budget, predictability of deliverables, requirements management and scope creep. By restructuring the typical project activities in a new way, Agile empowers development teams to consistently produce web software that’s tangibly better and results in greater customer acceptance.
Agile works wonders for web app development if you implement it correctly. Cost reduction, quick decision making and being result driven are also some of the reasons for applying agile methodologies for better web app development.