Agile in development. An IT contractor works with an agile methodology: how does that benefit the client?

Is it effective to use Agile in software development?

We dig into the nuances, the benefits for both client and developer, and the values of the Agile approach. Imagine you want to commission the development of an online store, a service, or a B2B portal and are choosing a contractor. You have two candidates: IT companies with similar experience.

Each with its own strengths: technology, team...

But one of the companies claims an advantage: "We work in Agile!"

What does Agile mean for the client: more profit?

Or more problems? Agile is a flexible approach to software development.

Here the work is broken into many small stages — sprints.

A sprint can last from a week to a month, and the outcome of each sprint is something the client can already work with — a product increment. With this approach it is easy for the client to control every stage of the work, and the result ends up maximally adapted to market demands.

Without Agile: the client doesn't see what the developers are actually doing; the finished product, awaited for so long, may disappoint.

If the project is stopped early, you can be left with nothing, since the result was planned to arrive only at the very end.

Making changes to the technical specification is hard and slow, requiring many approvals — bureaucracy.

Sometimes drafting the initial technical specification takes a company so much effort and time that reworking it seems impossible.

A programmer cares about finishing the project on time, without considering the cost of maintaining and changing the project later.

This is a serious problem with the project-based approach.

: in Agile there are no projects with fixed deadlines; the product comes first here, and it can be improved in "small steps" for as long as needed.

At the same time the process is so flexible that it can be stopped at any moment — and you are left with a finished increment that already works and interacts with the market.

We treat progress in the project as effectively endless, so we will have to clear the technical debt ourselves later.

This motivates writing clean code from the start and raises the contractor's motivation overall.

After all, the team is paid as long as it makes practical sense. And if most of the work goes into fighting technical debt, client satisfaction will decline. In Agile the development team communicates with the client constantly.

Meetings are held every day — the daily meeting.

This generates a lot of feedback that we respond to quickly. Of course, the client does not always have a convenient time — in that case we send a report so they understand today's plans and yesterday's facts.

The main project risk is failing to recover the investment.

The main way to prevent this is to hit the end customer's actual need.

Without Agile: are you ready to spend money for months or even years building a product whose profitability is in doubt? Remember that with the classic approach the result is visible only at the very end. With Agile: the team's focus is aimed at business goals from the start.

The more often new versions ship, the more often we get feedback from users and/or the market and do everything to make profitability grow.

Payback and return on investment are what matter most. Agile won't let you spend effort — and therefore money — long and mindlessly on unprofitable activities.

The client fully controls the process, so there will be no unpleasant surprises at the end.

Corporate clients very often ask how to handle documentation.

Its creation is built into the sprints as part of development (if documentation for a task is needed, we write it) or as a fixed block of hours.

Agile principles in IT development help our clients stay ahead of competitors and skim the cream off any market.

You can see examples of projects worked on using exactly this method in our portfolio.