When Agile is not the right choice? - Part 1

 Today, when everyone is talking about Agile as a must-have for a fast-paced world. There are cases or incidents when we do not need Agile project management.

Agile can shorten the software delivery cycle, improve quality, and result in better customer satisfaction. However, agile is not suitable for all projects.

What we are going to build? Who all will be involved in development? What is the culture of the workplace where this development is going to happen? Organization's ideology and beliefs? Industry to which organization belongs? Is the customer willing to collaborate or participate in the development process?

Answers to such questions help us to decide on Agile or No-Agile.

Let us look at each aspect in detail and decide on A or NOA.

In this post, we will discuss the type of project we are going to develop, and the approach would be A or NOA. Uncertainty in the project is one deciding factor. It can be internal or can be external. Let us take a hypothetical scenario. The organization wants to launch a trading application. The development team that is going to work has considerable expertise in developing trading applications in the past. The client organization, however, is not sure of the kind of trading application they want to launch. They have ideas, but nothing is final. They also want to explore the market and accordingly expand the area. Project management wants to promote an application based on acceptance in the market. As the development team is an expert and project management novice, the core expectation of the development team is to be creative.

What do you suggest? Agile seems the best way to go.

Let us now revert the situation here. The organization is very clear about the application to develop. They know when to deliver a particular feature to the market. They know the in-scope and out-scope of application. The development team is technically very sound. However, they have never developed such kind of application. What do you suggest? In this case, a traditional approach to project management may be more suitable. The reason is, there are not many unknowns. There is an answer to questions such as what to deliver and what not deliver. The development team needs to follow a straightforward plan here. 

We just covered one aspect of the project to be considered for A or NOA. In the next post, we will develop upon this. We will add more complex ingredients of risk, criticality, safety, and security to the type of project and analyze it further.