Introduction
As organizations worldwide adopt agile project management approaches, it has become increasingly popular. By learning the principles of Agile development and implementation, you can easily incorporate it into your business environment.
In today’s innovative business world, Agile project management has become a cornerstone for organizations who are seeking flexibility, adaptability, and efficiency. With its iterative approach and focus on collaboration, Agile empowers teams to deliver high-quality results and embrace changes in the later stage of development
In this article, I’ll discuss fundamentals of Agile workflow and practical strategies to implement Agile principles in your business and team. By unlocking a new level of productivity, innovation, and success. In a nutshell, agile principles will transform your overall working style.
Agile Workflow
Agile workflows represent a modern project management methodology designed to enhance efficiency and success rates. Agile workflows offer a dynamic and customer-focused approach to project management, incorporating iterative cycles and stakeholder collaboration to drive efficiency, adaptability, and overall project success. This approach achieves its goals through two fundamental principles:
Key Element of Agile Workflow
Before dive into agile, it is important to learn a few key terms that are integral part of the product development process:
The Agile Manifesto and the 12 Key Agile Principles
The Agile Manifesto serves as a detailed summary of the Agile methodology, outlining a blueprint for all projects to aspire to
It comprises 12 key Agile principles that are crucial for achieving success, divided into 4 categories.
Agile Principles of Customer Satisfaction
- Customer satisfaction holds the top most priority in every project. Continuous improvement through test-driven development is essential.
- Embrace changing throughout the development process, to design a product aligned with customer desires.
- Deliver working software and services frequently to gather constant customer feedback and adapt to evolving needs.
Agile Principles of Quality
Agile Principles of Teamwork
Product Backlog
Agile development methods commence with the development of the product backlog.
The product backlog comprises all tasks and ideas involved in product development. As customer feedback is incorporated, the backlog evolves to become more concrete.
Backlog items should be well-defined, prioritized, and tightly scoped.
Sprints
Sprints is a combination of tasks to complete in a given duration typically sprint duration is between 1-4 weeks. Each sprint has clear goals to be completed within a given time frame.
Focusing on a few backlog items ensures swift completion and immediate feedback incorporation.
Agile Meetings
Regular meetings are integral to the Agile process for staying updated and ensuring team alignment.Focusing on a few backlog items ensures swift completion and immediate feedback incorporation.
Two essential types of meetings include Daily Standups and Sprint Retrospectives.
Daily Standups
Held to review previous and current tasks and address any challenges.
Sprint Retrospectives
Conducted after a sprint’s completion to review what went well, what didn’t, and how to optimize future sprints. Incorporating these elements into your development workflow facilitates Agile implementation, fostering efficiency, adaptability, and continuous improvement.
Key terms essential in Agile workflow process for product development process.
The Agile Software Development Cycle
Here we will discuss typical software development methods in the Agile development process.
Conception
This stage involves the initial planning and envisioning of the project. It’s important to emphasize the creation of the product backlog, which serves as the foundation for prioritizing work and planning sprints.
Inception
Clarify that this stage involves not only creating sprint teams but also defining project requirements and setting up the working environment. Emphasize the importance of laying the groundwork for successful sprint execution.
Iteration
Specify that during this stage, the development team works on completing the user stories or backlog items selected for the sprint. Highlight the iterative nature of Agile development, where incremental progress is made in successive iterations.
Release
Expand on the release process, mentioning the importance of delivering working software to customers for feedback. Additionally, highlight the role of rigorous testing in ensuring the quality and reliability of the released product.
Retirement
Consider renaming this stage to “Closure” or “Project Closure” to better reflect its purpose. In addition to ending work on the development of the software, this stage may involve documenting lessons learned and archiving project-related documents for future reference.
Sprint Development Cycle
While the software development cycle highlights the development process as a whole, it’s important to break down the Agile development workflow for each sprint.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of the Agile development workflow for each sprint:
Requirements
First, clearly define the deliverables for each sprint (iteration) based on your product backlog and project requirements.
Testing
Rigorously test your backlog items and document your progress.
Delivery
Deliver your backlog items to your customer base for the final stage of testing.
Feedback
Document and accept feedback from your customers and stakeholders. Finish working on their suggestions before you move on to your next sprint.
Creating an Agile Workflow:
Here’s a simple four-step process to create your own Agile development workflow:
Forming
First, your team has to understand the principles of Agile and adopt the right Agile practices. Ensuring that you thoroughly go over these Agile practices is essential as it’ll make it easier for them to adapt to the new workflow.
Creating an Agile Workflow:
Storming
Now, start developing your product backlog and dividing the backlog items into sprints. Involve your team in this sprint planning process as they’ll be the ones executing it. Ensure that your sprints are realistic and you’re not trying to do too much in a short timeframe.
Norming
Team members are clear on their role and responsibility. You’ll have to assign different team members to different sprints and define what they’ll be working on in each sprint.
Performing
This is the Agile working phase. Remember to follow the principles of the Agile Manifesto in this stage and aim for continuous improvement over your development activities.
If you really want to enjoy the benefits of Agile, you’ll need to use the right project management software and tools. Agile workflow tools centralize all your Agile project activities – making it far easier for you to manage everything. A good Agile development tool will document your product backlog, plan your sprints, and facilitate team collaboration.
How to implement an Agile workflow with KiteSuite
Implementing an Agile workflow is easier than you think with the right project management tools.
Thankfully, KiteSuite offers Agile workflow management.
KiteSuite incorporates all the essential and advanced features a project management software must have.
Here’s a quick breakdown of KiteSuite features
As Agile is all about adapting to changes, your project management tool needs to be adaptable too!
Adaptable Task Views
Adaptable Task Views:
KiteSuite offers multiple task views tailored to different Agile frameworks. Choose between different agile boards (Kanban, Scrum). To keep your team work organized, manage tasks and backlog items effectively, and ensure smooth progress.
Task Management for Easy Manage
Users can easily manage all the details related to task just by clicking on the task and
Easy add: Add title, description, Manage project items/tickets, set details, receive tasks update with assignees, reporter and watcher.
Manage priorities: Add priority level, set the due date, manage task categories type (user story, item, and bugs), manage tasks by epics, sprints, status, time analysis (estimate vs log hours).
Advance feature: Add flags to easy access to your project work, share, Move, delete, or clone items
Create Details: Add title/summary, description, attachments, create checklist, subtasks, link items.
Custom Fields: Add custom fields to manage your unique project work, create custom labels to make the task self explanatory.
Other: Setup your task’s notification preferences. Switch layout to center, side, or full screen, and more.
Card View for Workflow Management
Gain a high-level overview of all current tasks with KiteSuite’s boar-view. This feature allows project managers to quickly identify who’s working on what, facilitating efficient workflow management.
Calendar View and Meeting scheduling
Plan and manage work schedules and sprints effortlessly using KiteSuite’s Calendar View. Also easy to create meetings and share with your team. Manage meetings and items with calendar Easy access with daily, weekly, and monthly view. Create custom meetings to enable seamless collaboration among team members, receive meeting notifications along with custom reminders, and easily add project members to join meetings.
Advance Filter to Enhanced Focus
Stay focused on deliverables with KiteSuite’s, filter to highlight comments, subtasks, and task lists assigned to you or particular team members. Minimize distractions and maximize productivity as you tackle your assigned tasks.
Track Sprints with Sprint Lists
Utilize checklists within KiteSuite to create sprint lists, breaking down deliverables for each sprint. Monitor progress, check off completed tasks, and track Scrum points to ensure alignment with project goals.
Visualize Progress with Dashboards
Leverage KiteSuite’s Dashboards for high-level overviews of Agile projects. Track velocity, burndown charts, burnup charts, and cumulative flow charts to monitor progress and identify bottlenecks.
Facilitate Communication with Comment and Real time chat
Foster collaboration and communication among team members using KiteSuite’s dedicated comment sections and chat features. Tag team members, exchange files, and share project updates seamlessly to keep everyone informed and engaged.
Enhance Task Management with Assigned Comments
Convert comments into actionable tasks and assign them to team members using KiteSuite’s Assigned Comments feature. Streamline task allocation and execution to expedite project progress.
Comprehensive documentation
Efficiently use KiteSuite ready made professional document template to quick start. Manage permission whether to allow users to edit the document or just for view. Easy check version history and retrieve older versions if needed. Take benefit from third party addons, like: Miro, Figma, loom, and more. Beautify your document with proper formatting, colors, fonts, etc. Mention project or workspace members in a document to have swift collaboration. Keep all your documents organized by utilizing KiteSuit’s document management feature for both workspace and projects.
Personalized Inbox
User can easily review total assigned work in each list, and each list will include data in the following format:
It shows Item title with Type, subtask count, project name, last update, check your work in calendar view, check weekly calendar with different times, keep updated with your daily/weekly meeting. Project’s list with members, show all project the user owns, include information like project name, type and key, show project members list.
KiteSuite also offers additional features like task priorities, dependencies, detailed project reports, comprehensive documentation create and share, advance form with integration and payment options, in built time tracking, with web and mobile apps for iOS and Android devices.
