The Agile Scrum methodology allows companies to achieve several benefits, ranging from the acceleration of applicative time-to-market to improved code quality.
Punctuality and the performance of the offered services have become fundamental levers of competition. In this business scenario, agile development methods embody an interesting opportunity for any organization dealing with digitization processes.
Scrum is probably the most popular of the Agile methods. They allow a streamline and accelerate the management of projects aimed at creating a product.
It is a framework, meaning a set of methodological and technical prescriptions. These define a cycle of development, release and management of the product-software, according to an iterative and incremental approach. The pipeline includes sprints (sequences of events) allowing the team to reach their final goal gradually, through a series of intermediate stages. Thus frequent releases follow, with small changes and additions, already getting benefits and improvements while in progress and without the need to wait for the final release.
Each increase developed is immediately tested and then distributed continuously: according to an empirical approach, users experience the changes made and give their feedback to the developers. This way, direct evidence of the results is shown before proceeding to the next steps, also noting any defects to be corrected.
The opportunities companies get from the adoption of the Agile Scrum methodology are diverse and revolve around five main benefits.
The main benefit of the Agile Scrum methodology is the acceleration of the applicative time-to-market. With the traditional waterfall methodology, development projects require too long release times, and no longer sustainable today, given the speed the digital business demands. Proceeding for small and frequent releases allows quickly satisfying end-users' requests.
The Scrum framework uses an empirical method that allows testing the effectiveness of any single increment, with the possibility of acting immediately in the event of an error.
Furthermore, in Scrum projects, the development team is organized in small groups of highly specialized figures, who work on a single aspect of the software and interact with each other.
Timely correction and focused skills help improve code quality.
The waterfall method consists of a single complete final release downstream of the development process. This system seriously increases the risk of project failure. Spending months developing the application and then noticing any flaws only after its launch, can have a dramatic impact in terms of wasted resources and economic damage.
Furthermore, the digital business is in constant evolution. The risk is to close the project when the needs have already changed, and the solution released is now useless or inappropriate.
In this scenario, thanks to its step-by-step procedure, the Agile Scrum methodology increases control over the software quality, corrects the route if needed, and complies to business needs.
The Agile Scrum methodology encourages collaboration between development teams and software users, providing periodic meetings and inter-functional tables.
Frequent releases allow testing the improvements directly in the field, with the possibility of immediately collecting user feedback. Then, developers can verify the quality of their work, and ensure the best user experience and alignment of the solution to business needs.
The Agile Scrum methodology defines the objectives precisely according to the satisfaction of the final customer.
The project is only considered successful if the solution created works as an answer to the problems and the requirements expressed by users.
Finally, the Agile Scrum methodology is future-proof, as it pairs perfectly with the approaches to cloud-native application development.
In fact, in modern hybrid and heterogeneous IT environments, the trend is to create software with modular architectures that integrate several independent functional units (microservices). The developers' teams are usually small and highly specialized. They can work simultaneously on individual modules without compromising the overall operation of the application.
Cloud-native development systems, then, offer a working process based on small incremental releases and continuously tested, with the possibility of receiving immediate feedback.