Agile is a family of flexible iterative-incremental methods for managing projects and products. According to this approach, the project is not divided into successive phases, but into small subprojects, which are then “assembled” into a finished product. Initiation and top-level planning are carried out for the entire project, and subsequent stages: development, testing, and others are carried out for each mini-project separately. This allows you to transfer the results of these mini-projects, the so-called increments, faster, and when starting a new sub-project (iteration), you can make changes to it without high costs and impact on the rest of the project. The most important advantage of Agile is its flexibility and adaptability, it can adapt to almost any conditions and processes of an organization (Waldeck, 2021). One of the principles of Agile is that reacting to change is more important than following a plan. It is the quick and relatively painless reaction to change that is the reason why many large companies strive to make their processes more flexible. Also, Agile is great for open-ended projects like starting a service or a blog. Thus, thanks to the analysis of the potentially affected area and the target audience of the project, it becomes possible to set the initial scope of implementation. The fact is that any project related to interaction with the audience can be interpreted as “open-ended”. Projects to develop such products have a high degree of uncertainty, and product information is disclosed as the project progresses. Under such conditions, it becomes impossible to implement the project on the “waterfall” – there is no information for planning.
I fully agree with Matthew that traditional management is effective, but it does not do enough of the necessary tasks. Modern methods are able to foresee many subtleties and dangers that will prevent the occurrence of errors in the development of the project or indicate the vectors of necessary changes in time. Separately, it is worth highlighting the passive participation of clients in the regulation of the project, which Matthew emphasized. This is also certainly one of the advantages over alternative management methods.
Reference
Waldeck, M. V. (2021). Success factors for Agile planning: Agile planning successfully and purposefully – your competitive advantage. Books on Demand.