Why we do Agile

Traditional project management methodologies use a fixed number of discrete stages to progress a project from concept to delivery. In outline these stages normally look something like:

• Concept
• Evaluation
• Initiation
• Specification
• Design
• Develop
• Test
• Deploy
• Review

The project cannot move to the next stage until the current stage is completed. This approach, often referred to as “Waterfall”, makes sense for engineering projects such as bridge building where the end product is well understood and will not change in size or shape during the project lifecycle.

Unfortunately, the Waterfall approach does not work so well for web technology projects. This is because as information comes to light during the project, business drivers may change and fundamentally influence what the client needs from the product we create for them.

Agile projects are designed to accept change from clients. We liaise closely and continuously with clients as the project progresses, delivering the product in bite sized chunks (which we call increments), and so maintaining the ability to flex to accommodate changing business requirements.

We have decades of web project management expertise in our team, and have worked on projects big and small, using Agile and traditional project management methodologies like PRINCE2.
Agile works best – we know, not from books, courses or exams, but real world, hard won experience working with customers.

Read the white paper (pdf)