Contemporary managers in the sphere of software development increasingly prefer Agile when it comes to choosing of software development methodology. Why is Agile becoming more and more popular?
Traditionally, team work is understood by some conservative managers as the following: “team work is when everything is done as I say”. At first sight, this approach seems quite appropriate when deadlines are strict, but upon closer look it has some week sides in comparison with Agile methodology:
1. There is quite strong pressure on the team because of strict deadlines and lack of time; it is hard for the specialists of the project team to work in the conditions of such pressure.
2. Team members do not feel personal responsibility for their work within a project. However, Agile methodology encourages each team member to realize his personal responsibility for his duties and his piece of work within a project. It is convenient to describe the duties of every team member in the special program such as Free task tracking software – Comindware Task Management because other members of the team and managers can see who is responsible for this or that piece of work.
3. If one or even several specialists from a project team will not be able to cope with their duties (for the reason of sudden illness or any other urgent circumstances), it will be difficult to cope with the project in time without them. Usually within traditional methodology the functions of each specialist are rigidly defined. But Agile supposes cross functionality. This means that in the case if a programmer is not able to perform his duties within a project for some time, other members of a project team are able to temporarily replace him. This is also true for other IT-specialists of a project team within a cross functional approach. And it will be easier for other team members to get into gear (when it will be necessary to replace somebody of their colleagues) if his duties and responsibility will be reflected in the special Issue Tracking System which has rather wide functions by the way.
4. So, the deadlines are often thwarted because of psychological pressure (which negatively influences the quality of work and creativity of the specialists) and blurring of responsibility. These negative aspects can also be overcome within Agile methodology due to some advantages of Agile described above.
5. A manager and his project team usually feel the terrible stress and nervous strain because of the reasons described above. But it is quite logical that Agile will relieve the manager and the team from these unpleasant events because likelihood of stressful situations when using Agile methodology is minimal.
So, the general answer to the question “Why do managers prefer Agile?” sounds like this: “Because Agile helps to save nerves and avoid excessive stress during the work within a project”.
