What is Agile Methodology? Part 01

Times are changing at a rate faster than ever before. Earlier, products were built to last as long as possible, WITHOUT any changes. However, with the advent of the digital era, making small nooks and changes has become extremely common. Customer switching costs are low and your competitors catch-up with your value differentiators with the blink of an eye. The product life-cycle length has reduced from several years to a few months, or sometimes a few weeks. Your Android apps get updated every week!

In this world where your digital products need to keep changing, Agile methodology comes to the rescue. How? Agile keeps taking feedback from your customers/users and incorporating those to your existing software. Agile is not something that does this automatically, but if your team follows this methodology, it will always have one way or another to make changes quickly.

Let's take the example of a user coming to you asking for something to make his daily commute easier. In an agile method of developing it, we will keep providing the user with usable prototypes of a car one by one.

1. User asks for a product that he/she can ride faster than walking.

Give them roller skates!

2. The user says he/she was expecting something he/she can sit on.

Give them a bicycle!

3. The user will say "I have put in efforts in this myself, I need something I don't have to push."

Give them a motor-cycle!

4. User asks for something that can even save him/her from the weather and the winds.

Give them a car!

All these are examples of very specialised pieces of machinery. Making small changes to any one of them takes huge amounts of efforts. However, consider this in the context of online services and software. They can change quickly and in an easier way. But the essence is, your product keeps evolving - with the customer, with the market, and with the competitors!