How adopting an agile approach can optimize your business outcomes
Since an organization’s strategic initiatives are implemented through projects and programs that drive change, enhance competitive advantage and fuel growth, it is imperative that companies take a holistic approach to project management and select the project management method that best suits the needs of a given project.
Agile approaches can complement traditional project management methods to quickly meet customer demands in today’s increasingly dynamic marketplace.
Agile practices rose to prominence within the information technology industry, where adaptability and agility are required to meet the demand for flexibility inherent in that business space. The considerations that led to the widespread use of agile within the information technology industry now have implications across a wide range of industries, as software and other technologies increasingly impact everything from product manufacturing to marketing initiatives.
As a result, the use of agile project management techniques is on the rise. According to PMI’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession report (titled Success Rates Rise: Transforming the High Cost of Low Performance), 71 percent of the organizations surveyed are frequently using agile approaches to project management.
Additionally, organizations wasted an average of 9.7 percent, or $97 million for every $1 billion invested in projects and programs in 2016. The year prior, organizations wasted an average of $122 million per $1 billion invested. This improved performance coincides with the increasing adoption of a full range of project management approaches, including agile, by organizations.
Real-time improvements
Agile techniques allow project teams to deliver specific features and then work with customers on improvements in real time. So while agile is not practiced in place of managing a project, the approach is frequently introduced as a means of accelerating the phases of a project.
Forward-thinking organizations are embracing a continuum of project-management practices that range from predictive to agile, well-defined to iterative, and from more- to less-controlled. Research demonstrates that roughly one-quarter of organizations’ projects use hybrid or customized project management approaches that match a specific technique to the needs of an individual project or stakeholder group.
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