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While there are a large number of business benefits to working with a company that practices agile development, or to using agile practices with an internal development team, I have listed the top 5, in no particular order. This post is written in terms of the customer and as such, before getting into it, we need to learn a spot of vocabulary (taken from Wikipedia).

• Scrum: a project management method for agile software development
• Product backlog: a prioritized list of work that needs to be done, controlled by the Product Owner (i.e. Customer); the stories to be completed
• Sprint: a time period (usually 2 to 4 weeks) in which development occurs on a set of (user) stories that the Team has committed to
• Sprint backlog: the Team’s interpretation of the product backlog containing concrete tasks that will be done during the next sprint to implement some of the top items in the Product Backlog.

For good reading on Agile development and more specifically scrum, I suggest “Agile Project Management with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber and “Agile Software Development with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle.

You, the product owner, is in control

Through the continuous prioritization of the work that needs to be done, you have control over what is developed when. This ensures that features providing the highest ROI for the project are completed first. This also means that critical core functionality is developed first, so that as more value is added, testing can be performed to ensure that nothing core has been broken.

Change is welcome

Unlike software development projects of the past that required costly change orders with major time impacts, with agile, you have a chance to change course every two or four weeks. As value is added your priorities might change. With agile, not only is that alright, that is expected and easily handled. Also, if at any point in the development process you decide that you are ready to go live with what you have, you can do so. Of course, check with the team first, just in case.

More communication with the team

Another big change that agile brings is increased communication between the team and you. If they don’t understand something, you will get an email or a call. You may get more than you expect, until the team has a grasp of what you are trying to accomplish. This is very important, as you understand your business and customers better than we do. Also, you are invited to the daily scrum (described below), where you can gain important insight into the status of your project on a daily basis.

Results, faster

The goal of a sprint is potentially shippable functionality. That means fully tested, documented, bug free, refactored code. While the first sprint or two may need to lay the groundwork for the project and handle non-functional requirements (the parts you don’t see such as database design and architectural stuff), each successive sprint will yield tangible results that you can work with and provide feedback on.

Less management overhead with self-managing teams

Self-managing teams is a term I have heard many times but did not understand until I read “Agile Project Management”. Scrum is different than traditional project management in that there is no project manager. With scrum, you have a scrum master, whose job it is to guide everyone through the process, and remove barriers to progress. It is up to the team, however, to determine what they will commit to completing during a sprint, and how they will make it happen. During the daily scrum the team provides an update of what they have done, what they are doing, and what if anything is impeding progress. The daily scrum is not a chance for the scrum master to tell the team what to do or for you to attempt to change direction, but rather to let everyone know how things are going. The “feet on the ground” team is empowered to make whatever decisions are necessary to complete their job. They are never told how to do it, that’s up to them.

Other posts you may enjoy

• Top 5 developer benefits of agile development
• Taking Scrum One Project at a Time
• The Changing Role of Managers