How Agile Software Development Methodology Helps to Prioritize Initiatives and Improve Productivity.

How Agile Software Development Methodology Helps to Prioritize Initiatives and Improve the Productivity

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Story: An Initiative to Live

Stella and Emila are twin polar bears, who have just reached the age of leaving their mother’s shelter and lead a life in their ways.

As both of them were looking for food, they wait at the ice floes in the middle of the ocean. The water is freezing as Stella checks with her foot.

Emila watches her sister, gets scared, and decides to wait for fish to come on the ice for her.

Stella, on the other hand, is courageous. She takes the initiative and dives into the chilling water. After much difficulty and struggle, Stella manages to get a seal-fish to quench her hunger.

However, Emila waits for long, only to find that she has to sleep hungry that night.

Moral: Taking an initiative is the only way to turn your luck in favor. Else, one is certainly going to get nothing.

“In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.�

Abraham Maslow

So yeah, this is the thing with taking initiatives. But you may wonder which action to consider first when there are many lying ahead of you. It would help if you surely were extra cautious when prioritizing which initiative is more important than the others. How can you decide what work to take on primarily, especially when you are a manager?

An organization has crucial decisions to take, at an acute time, which decides the end-result will be a success or failure

for

customer

the

company.

reports,

Decisions

developing

like

establishing

strategic

product

components, or handling GDPR compliance, seek a fair amount of attention. Prioritizing, amongst such choices, is a complicated task.

Agile Core Practice: Prioritized Requirements

In our routine life, we all need to choose some tasks over others, whether we like that or not. The time constraints us from doing everything all-together. Hence, we ought to

prioritize

our

duties

and

responsibilities.

Our

preferences for attending to some events/tasks before others may vary from person-to-person.

Similarly, Being an modern agile organization needs to prioritize

its

terminology)

initiatives. are

Initiatives

prominent

and

(in

broader

the

agile

objectives,

striving for successful goals within the time of a few quarters.

An

organization

needs

to

prioritize

initiatives to:

Utilize the human resources ingeniously Utilize its tools and resources efficiently Keep-up with the time constraints Prioritize Your Product Backlog

its

Being

an

Technology

Agile

organization,

considers

these

6

Bacancy following

factors before prioritizing:

1. Customer Satisfaction

Satisfying customers is the first and foremost goal of any company.

The

team

members

prioritize

those

functionalities at the top, which are most important for customers. They use the Kano method for weighing the measurement of customer satisfaction that helps them to prioritize.

2. Business Value

The product owner or the business analyst finds out which functionality will add the most value to the business goal and prioritizes it.

3. Amount and Frequency of Usefulness

The number of users of a product or the frequency of usage

can

matter

for

prioritizing

the

product-specific

functionality. For instance, an initiative that has frequent usage should be on a high priority.

4. Cost

Generally, low-cost and high-return has higher priority as compared However,

to

high-cost

looking

at

and other

low-return

functionality.

prioritization

factors,

sometimes, the product owners also need to prioritize high-cost high-return initiatives.

5. Risks

The perception to mitigate the risks early puts high-risk initiatives

on

high-priority.

This

way,

the

project

is

ensured of overall risk during implementation.

6. Complexity

Executing

complex

tasks

beforehand

lower

the

mental

stress arising in later stages. Hence, it is advisable to attend functionalities with serious difficulties first.

Generally, the Product Owner prioritizes the initiatives based on the above factors. It is ranked by one of the following tags- Now, Next, and Later.

Now: The initiatives with ‘now’ tag are the foremost important ‘now’

and

highest

justifies

priority

that

they

initiatives. are

The

under

term

current

implementation. The organization expects the results of these initiatives within 90 days.

Next: After all, the ‘now’ initiatives are complete, the agile teams put their hands on the ‘next’ functionalities.

The

team

members

get

mentally

prepared

as

this

category of initiatives is decided in advance.

Later: The master tags the least important initiatives with

‘later’

tag,

which

is

the

backlog

tag.

These

functionalities are not under execution yet and can be dropped off entirely from the list.

Some of the most popular Best Agile Prioritization Techniques in Scrum are:

Stack Ranking Kano Model Moscow Method Cost of Delay The relative Weighing method by Karl Weigers 100 Dollar Test Priority Poker

An agile organization may follow any of these listed prioritization

techniques

and

attain

profitable

end-

results. Let us look at the after-effects of prioritization.

The Impact of Agile Prioritization Techniques

Following this technique of prioritizing initiatives in an agile organization, has a positive impact on both the scrum and

Kanban

team

as

well

as

to

the

overall

business

organization.

This section will also answer all of you who have this question

in

mind-

What

are

the

benefits

of

Agile

development?

Agile Prioritization Techniques: Business Benefits

Fast ROI (return of investments) Minimal risks Better dependency-management Focus on value-driven development Customer satisfaction leads to business-satisfaction

Backlog

Prioritization

in

Agile

Software

Development: Benefits to the Scrum team

Find out how Agile project management, reduces costs, improves scheduling and productivity.

The

team

saves

time

in

selecting

stories(project-

issues) and hence can lay effective grooming The

team

saves

time

in

selecting

stories(project-

issues) and therefore can effectively plan their sprints They get better visibility to pick stories within the current sprint scope In

case

of

reduced

team

bandwidth

because

of

member absence or emergency production fix, they have better visibility to drop stories from the current sprint scope.

The Ultimate Asset: Productivity

In an agile methodology, everyone focuses on one task at a time. Compared to the waterfall method, the Agile software development method has a smaller scope of work.

Primarily

focusing

on

because

small

all

portions

the at

a

team time,

members the

team

are can

accurately estimate the timelines and meet short-term deadlines swiftly. Ideally, urgency and short-term goals excite the employees to work at their best potential. All these things turn out favorable for your business outputs, employee satisfaction, along with customer satisfaction.

If you want to attain assured and speedy success with your business, you can follow our Agile Approach.