How Does Agile Help You Meet Your Customers’ Needs?

While Agile may be relatively new, it has been adopted by numerous companies to drive sales and leads.

One of the main reasons why Agile is so popular is because it almost always brings impressive results. Agile helps to strengthen and further develop each stage of the product development cycle.

A business that agrees to adopt agile will automatically receive a rise in customer satisfaction, experience and engagement.

If you're looking for ways to improve your customers' satisfaction with your business, consider adopting the Agile methodology. Here are ways that Agile can help you and your team.

1. Agile promotes collaboration which improves relationships.

What makes Agile different from other styles of project management is that it requires a great deal of communication. Conveying, building relationships between clients, business owners and anyone involved in the project helps to increase the success rate of the project.

Collaborations and discussions increase the engagement of the team and also helps to boost the relationship between all stakeholders.

It gives a sense of ownership for all participants such as the product owner and the client. More creativity and productivity have also been seen in other businesses that have adopted the Agile methodology.

2. Having an assessment for every sprint.

The biggest issue with project management is to spend months working on the project, only to deliver something that the client does not want. Don't be surprised but this turn of events happens all the time.

Utilizing the Agile methodology helps to lower the chance of this happening.

There is an assessment for every sprint. With Agile, each sprint is shared with the customer to gather their feedback. This allows the team to make the necessary changes before it is too late. They can also take the opportunity to understand even further what the customers are looking for.

How long is a sprint in Agile? It is usually between a few days to three weeks.

An extra benefit of the Agile methodology is that your customers will feel more engaged and involved with the project.

Your customers can input their ideas or what they have in mind for you to make it into a reality.

3. Increasing the customers’ value steadily.

 A huge benefit that Agile gives is that the customers can receive their benefits in increments.

As Agile breaks down the project into many stages, there will be small deliverables at each stage. As the project progresses, Agile users can offer their customers the highest value at the end of each sprint.

With small successful sprints, it makes it possible for the product owner to launch their product into the market quicker or overcome business problems promptly.

Agile will also help to lower the percentage of resource wastage. Each sprint gives all stakeholders a chance to voice out and make changes to the situation.

4. Involving the customers makes it more interesting.

As your customers are more involved in the planning and execution of the project, they will feel an increase in satisfaction. They can participate more in the direction of the project and are more understanding of the possible outcomes.

5. The key is to literally involve your customer in the project.

Through Agile projects, the customer's input is of high priority. With the Agile methodology, the customer or at least someone from their business should be a regular in your team.

They are not going to just appear at the start and end of the project. If possible, this "someone" should almost always be present at all of the Agile sprints and meetings.

If your customer does not have the capacity for someone to work with you daily, at least try to convince them to join for core meetings. Core meetings are essential to determining the direction of the project.

Agile's benefits are the most evident when customers are more involved in the project.

A way to pitch this idea to your customers is that they have the power to change the product any time they want. They have a huge say in however the project is going.

The moment they have an idea or a concern, Agile meetings give them the chance to raise it and improvements can be made! 

How do I apply Agile at my organization?

How can you apply Agile at my organization? Here's a few tips on how to get you started.

Create a sprint

At the start of your project, plan sprints for your team. Each sprint can be between 1-3 weeks. In each project sprint, there could be a new case study being shared or a new feature being discussed. A topic or a meeting objective can be included.

Schedule daily standup meetings

While the term daily meetings might sound boring, the key is to have short, daily standup meetings. Agile daily standup meetings are meant to be short and can be completed within 10-30 minutes.

In this short window, team members share what they'll be working on that day and what they have worked on yesterday.

It is important to keep the meeting brief or it will decrease the morale of your team. 

Record feedback from your customers consistently

Speak to the people involved constantly and try to get a feel of what they think. Collate the feedback and add it into your project.

You can also extend your research or break down the research into smaller bits so that the deadlines can be nearer to each other. Reports can then be submitted earlier and more efficiently.

Celebrate the small wins

Be it a small accomplishment or something that you've learned, share it with your team! These small achievements are truly what keeps the team going! Trust us, it will help to keep the morale of your group strong.

In Conclusion

Through Agile project management, customer engagement and customer satisfaction can be increased.

If the customer truly understands the benefits of Agile and profits from it, it increases the chance of you getting another job from them!

There is never a better time than now to adopt Agile or Scrum. Find out more or sign up for a course today! We work with Singapore government bodies to provide subsidies of up to 90%!