Development methods for complex tasks should be chosen on the basis of the individual organization’s current project maturity, agile culture, steering mechanisms and strategy.
The choice between a plan driven- or agile development method is crucial for project success, and for when benefits realization can be fulfilled. The endless requirements for increased organizational value creation, delivered at increasingly high speeds and using fewer resources, challenges a wide array of organizations’ current ways of working on projects.
At the same time, the agile method is becoming popular with managers as a solution for creating value at a faster pace, while simultaneously having the ability to handle modifications and changing priorities.
The study
A study conducted by Standish Group, Boston, which included over 100.000 projects, shows, that development projects, where the agile method was used, were three times more successful when it came to the agreed-upon timeframe and costs, compared to other projects, that had been using traditional methods.
Experience shows that development methods for complex tasks should be chosen on the basis of the individual organization’s current project maturity, culture, steering-mechanisms and strategy. Bigger development tasks are often initiated on the basis of a positive business case and a ‘return of investment-estimate’.
The benefits of an agile culture
The benefits are becoming more and more important, and this goes for both public and private organizations.
In many organizations, however, the choice of development method is controlled by the individual project manager’s interests or desire to ‘nerd out’ with modern methodologies, or what feels comfortable to them, rather than building on an organizationally determined strategy for how development tasks should be approached.
The requirement for the pace at which a development tasks should be completed has increased concurrently with the technological developments of the last decades. This has resulted in many ‘heavy’ information workers from different fields, being involved in task completion.
At the same time, the requirement for efficiency improvement and cost reduction has become more prominent in our society as a whole.
