Scrum offers a significant edge in project management. Utilizing Scrum workshops and reaping the benefits of Scrum is advantageous for the the teams, the clients and for the bottom line.
Your team has been considering an Agile Transformation for some time. You know your operating model could be and do better, but you're not sure if Agile is the right path for you. Once you see the benefits of Agile Scrum, there won't be any doubt in your mind.
Scrum makes you faster, more efficient, and more effective in delivering the results your customers want. Here are six key benefits of Scrum that prove the point.
1. Better Quality
One of the biggest benefits of Scrum? Quality. Think of it this way. Projects exist for the sole purpose of helping you accomplish a goal. But if you don't complete that goal well, your client won't be happy and it's less valuable to you. So, quality control is essential to getting your money's worth.
Scrum builds in quality control from the very beginning in the framework itself. Remember, Scrum demands that you frequently check in with your colleagues and clients to ensure that everything is on track and on schedule.
And if it's not meeting the client's needs, you can course-correct much sooner.
2. More Control and Less Risk
This is also why Scrum offers users greater control and lower overall risk.
Scrum production periods are organized into sprints, which are time-boxes of one month or less in which a project increment is completed. These occur throughout the development cycle in stages until the entire process is completed.
Much like physical sprints, Scrum sprints are highly controlled and precise. There is no wasted effort and no time to do anything less than your best. But in order to sprint effectively, the whole team has to be on the same page and giving 110% from the first day of the sprint to the last day of the sprint.
This means that your production process is controlled down to the last detail, with everyone from the project manager to the stakeholder knowing exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
3. Lower Production Costs
You know software development. You also know what lowers its value the most: the cost of production.
The more time and effort required to produce something, the more expensive it is to produce. It makes sense when you think about it--you have to pay your employees for time and labor, but customers get irritated when a product takes longer to produce than promised.
The trouble is that companies are rarely able to predict the true costs of production. Not accurately, anyway.
Scrum sprints don't allow the space for any wasted effort. So before a sprint begins, your team uses Story Points to estimate the difficulty of implementing a given User Story (a project work that yields, once implemented, a contribution to the value of the overall product, irrespective of the order of implementation). Basically, you're estimating the complexity of the task at hand.
Complexity correlates with the cost of production (i.e. more complex products take longer to make). This makes it easier for you to map out the production process and estimate the cost of developing certain features while letting your project managers prioritize tasks more effectively.
4. Decreased Time to Market
Because your team can map out the project in advance and because Scrum projects are designed in sprints lasting from two weeks to a month, you wind up with a decreased overall time to hit the market.
This happens at all stages of the process.
First, you can implement the project earlier thanks to a project manager embedded in the Scrum team. Instead of laying out the requirements ahead of time, the project manager can introduce requirements at the right moment so that the team can stay lean, mean, and focused.
Because it's easier for the team to stay focused, it's also easier for them to separate high-priority items from low-priority items and deliver value based on the right priority for client and the market.
And at the end of the sprint, two weeks or a month later? You've got a potentially shippable product increment or even a feature ready (but definitely a prioritized segment of a larger project ready to go). You're cutting out everything extra in favor of a more efficient process.
5. Improved Communication
You want your team to work fast. But like an Olympic sprinter, the team can't work fast if they're wasting effort. And if they're trying to conserve effort, they have to be able to communicate effectively.
Scrum is designed with this problem in mind.
Scrum teams get together every day to establish where everyone's at, what each team member should be working on, and what needs to get done before the next meeting.
And if someone's lagging, these daily meetings can catch the problem and get them on track. It also fosters an environment of open, active communication so that the team talks to each other even outside of these meetings.
6. Higher Customer Satisfaction
Finally, all of these factors come together to produce a net result that's great for your ROI: higher customer satisfaction.
Think of it this way.
Sprints are short. Crazy short. In as little as two weeks, you can present a product, a work increment or a feature to your client, finished, polished, and ready to hit the market.
And that efficiency will boost credibility and keep your customers coming back for more.
More than that, sprints produce value for your customers. Your team communicates more effectively and works more efficiently in a sprint setting so that you can deliver exactly what the client wants on the first try. When you deliver a product, it's ready to hit the next stage.
That's something your customers won't soon forget.
Using the Benefits of Scrum
Once you become familiar with the real benefits of Scrum, it's hard to envision your team doing anything else.
So why waste time? Your teams could already do better than ever, become better engaged. Not only it will boost morale but will also enable your business to truly tap into talent, creativity and innovation they bring.
If you're looking to implement Scrum with your teams, we can help you get started with our Agile workshops and Agile Transformation services.
If you're ready to take the dive, click here to schedule a call to find out more.