Agile Software Development at a glance: Agile Success Factors for teams
Updated: Jan 18, 2022
The Agile success factors are the make-or-break factors for an agile team wanting to be agile. You need to be aware of them and plan to address them as early in your journey as possible.
Collaborate with multiple peers - An agile team will have to collaborate with different peers (e.g., Customers, Project Managers, etc.) and one with each other within the team itself. The ability of the team to create and maintain respectful and effective communication channels will reduce impediments related to communication issues and, by far increasing their ability to focus on the right things.
Energized team - The team must have the energy and motivation to push for continuous improvement at all times and be eager to deliver constant business value.
Automation framework - Agile teams will not succeed unless they have the frameworks and skills to automate as many tests and processes involved in their day-to-day efforts. The ability of the team to automate will reduce the tedious, menial, and error-prone tasks to the minimum.
Freedom to take decisions - The team must have the courage and space to make technical decisions to ensure they succeed in shipping quality software.
Not compromising on quality - Agile software development can add much pressure on its teams. When this happens, the team will usually focus on delivering the product while slightly compromising its quality. And that's my readers is a big mistake. Agile teams should never bypass quality controls, even under pressure. An agile team should know that a lack of attention to quality will increase technical debt, impact the company's reputation in the field, and slow the team. Make quality part of everything you do.
Have the right mentality and dedication - Agile team members should understand the essential mindset of agile and its values, which means that they focus on the customer and their day-to-day efforts to improve. Team members must have the dedication and willingness to support the business goals and challenges that come as part of it.
Clear product vision and roadmap - Agile teams should know the company goal and the overall roadmap planned to achieve it. This goes far beyond the team activity, focusing on a single component or a feature. To do so, the organization should ensure the clarity of these agile artifacts. Without doing so, people will start to wonder how they fit in the big picture and if their work contributes.
Technical Versatility - at the end of the day, an agile team should have the specialized experience and knowledge to translate product requirements into working increments.