Every business starts small. With time, its expertise in the industry and the number of customers grow, and with this, so does the organization itself. As a result, it starts taking more and more complex projects.
As things progress, you will realize that scaling your firm brings its own set of challenges. While it might have been easy to manage a team of just eight to ten people, the same methodologies don’t work for larger teams.
Every software development company has encountered the problem of scaling the organization. Different companies use different approaches. Agile methodology has had considerable success in ensuring that the firm scales smoothly.
Agile is a continuous development and testing cycle framework. It is perhaps the most widely accepted and practiced software-development methodology in the world. Here is how an Agile development team can help scale your firm.
Focus on the Product
There is no point in scaling the firm if it negatively impacts the quality of the product. Often, firms get so caught up in their tools and processes that they lose sight of their product’s quality.
You need to appoint a product owner. The product owner is responsible for everything related to the product and ensures the product lives up to the client’s expectations.
Agile methodology puts the product at its core, and it is the best way to ensure that scaling-up your firm doesn’t come at the cost of your product’s quality.
Get the Right Development Infrastructure
One of the core Agile values is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” It implies that Agile focuses more on delivering a product that will make the customer happy rather than choosing the right processes and tools.
At the same time, it does not ignore the value of the development infrastructure. To develop an extraordinary product and scale your organization, you need the right set of tools and processes to assist your workforce.
An Agile team will employ a microservice architecture. It will enable the developers to build the software in small units that run on large technology stacks such that they don’t interfere with one another.
This approach ensures that your product is robust and stable. You can extend this approach to large projects that involve multiple teams with ease.
Fast Results
Agile is all about delivering a product in a short time. The Agile teams work synchronously to deliver fast results that do not compromise on quality.
The Agile product development cycle will allow your firm to take up more projects that will, in turn, help you scale your firm.
Identify Projects that Add Value
You may come across many projects, but taking up all of them is might not be feasible. However, some projects can add immense value to your firm, and the key to successfully scaling lies in identifying these projects. You can do so using Agile methods.
As per Agile, you must evaluate the complete cycle of the product. Try to understand what value the project brings to the organization right from the beginning. You have to consider the skills required, the funding, deploying the project, and the customer’s reaction.
You have to find a balance between the implementation and the business’ needs.
Optimize Your Investments
Funding and budgeting are crucial to scaling any organization. Without the proper management of funds, you will find it hard to implement any plans to expand.
An Agile team works in short iterations and produces deliverables in small segments. This approach considerably reduces the work in progress at the organization at any given time. It allows you to identify areas where your investments are not living up to their full potential.
You can then come up with strategies to optimize your investment and push your firm’s growth.
Implement Agile Release Trains
Agile Release Trains or ARTs play a huge role when it comes to scaling firms. An ART is a large Agile team that consists of several smaller ones. Each team follows the Agile framework and works on its deliverables.
The ART shares a common roadmap and vision. They help all the teams work in tandem. All the teams in an ART will have the same iteration length, and the milestones for each development cycle is decided beforehand.
ART brings all the different teams under the same umbrella and enables the whole organization to work towards a common goal. It increases cooperation within the firm and ensures that each team works towards one goal – scaling your firm.
Optimize for Your Business
Agile teams can help you optimize your business. The teams offer significant insights into the impact the project has on your business.
You can use these insights to gauge whether or not the project is serving your business needs. If it isn’t, you can steer it in the right direction. Agile ensures that you do not lose focus on the end result of keeping the customer happy.
When you remember that customer satisfaction is the most important goal, you will be more inclined to develop a product that meets the customer’s expectations instead of getting lost in the business’s technicalities.
Framework for Scaling
Scaling must be a carefully planned activity, and Agile offers many frameworks that will guide your efforts towards this objective. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), and Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) are a few Agile frameworks that enable scaling.
You will need to evaluate each of these frameworks’ pros and cons and select one that works best for your organization’s needs.
An Agile development team can help you with this. It will be easier to implement the framework when the team members are already familiar with Agile. The success of the scaling relies heavily on the informed participation of Agile teams.
Conclusion
Agile is a tested and proven method that can benefit a wide range of organizations. Whether you are working on how to manage the resource planning of an organization or how to build an app for eSports, Agile development teams can help you find the right answers and create a high-quality, stable, and robust product. By delivering an exceptional product, you can make your customers happy and expand your business.
