Whether You’re A Startup Or A Fortune 100 Company, An Agile Project Management Approach Is The Way To Go

The traditional Waterfall method that many companies use for project management doesn’t necessarily cut it anymore.

Why? Because it involves too much waiting.

You can’t start the next phase until you’ve finished the previous one. You’re always constricted by the previous step.

The problem is, we’re living in a dynamic and fast-paced world where rapid change is the norm.

I used to work on projects that would schedule a release date two years down the road. I never understood why we were waiting that long to release anything. How could we be certain that nothing would change in two years?

Fortunately, Agile presents a different option. The iterative approach embraces a changing and dynamic market.

Agile is a better approach for companies of any size, because it relies on smaller cycles.

Instead of planning everything up front — and going through phases of requirements, design, development, testing, and implementation — Agile takes you through smaller cycles of those phases and allows you to release in an iterative and incremental fashion.

Whether your company has five employees or five thousand, Agile project management has something to offer.

Agile And Startups

As a startup, you can’t afford to waste resources while trying to gain momentum.

Cash flow is so important.

If you wait too long to get your product to market or make sales, your company may not survive.

That’s why an Agile approach makes so much sense. Agile forces you to ask, “What’s the minimum viable product?” Then, release it quickly so you can get feedback. It doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles, you just need to be able to continue adapting and improving it.

Working On The Minimum Viable Product

I was working on a web development project several years ago, and the group began by brainstorming the features we needed.

Once we had chosen the features, we estimated that it would take at least six months to develop a website with all of them.

But we weren’t going to wait that long.

We decided to release an update to the site every two weeks. We started with a homepage, an “About Us” page, and a contact page. The minimum viable product. Then, we gradually added new features to the website every two weeks. By the fourth or fifth release, we realized that people were actually happy with the website we had.

We didn’t even need all the features we’d brainstormed at the beginning of the project. People were satisfied with about 40% of the original features.

That only happened because we were using an Agile approach. We got our minimum viable product out there, listened to feedback, and adjusted accordingly. Agile is so effective for startups because it takes big, six-month to year-long projects and breaks them down into something more manageable and valuable that can go to market faster and get returns sooner.

Agile And Fortune 100 Companies

The same principles that make Agile so effective for startups are applicable to large companies.

The larger the company, the more processes in place. More processes means more complexity. You may be dealing with multiple teams in different time zones.

Approval processes might take weeks. Inefficiencies are common.

Many people feel that these constraints make it challenging to use Agile. They may ask, “Sure, it’s easy to use Agile when you’re a startup trying to get your website working, but how does this work for a large organization?”

Inspect And Adapt

The key is to inspect and adapt your way through the challenges that large-scale complexity presents.

Stick to regular iterations, listen to feedback, and adapt as things progress.

Get back to the basics of, “What’s the simplest thing that could possibly work, and how can we improve from there?”

Maybe two weeks is too short of a time period to be continually releasing. That’s okay. Use a four-week timebox instead. Imagine a project that’s supposed to be released in a year. Could there be a release at the end of the first month? Is there something to build on in regular intervals in the months to follow?

Figure out what’s holding you back.

Remember, Agile makes your company’s inefficiencies visible. In a large company, finding and eliminating those inefficiencies is half the battle.

Reflecting on how to improve at regular intervals can lead to improvements that increase the quality of the product and also enhance how the team members work together.

Identify the roadblocks at the team level and across the organization that need to be addressed in order to move forward more effectively and efficiently.

Continuous improvement is the key to higher performance.

When you really study the nature of the Agile approach, you’ll realize that it’s applicable in any situation. Whether it’s a startup working out of someone’s basement, or a Fortune 100 company with offices on three continents, the principles of Agile project management can be applied to yield great benefits.

You simply have to iterate and continuously improve.