Incremental Delivery

In agile, work is broken up into short bursts of work known as iterations. These are often known as sprints in scrum. Each sprint is focused on producing a single deliverable as apposed to traditional project which focuses on a single release at the end of the project’s timeline. Agile is focused on always delivering something that is improved incrementally. A waterfall project is completed in some number of phases. In the first phase some foundation is set. In the second phase that foundation is then built upon according to whatever requirements were gathered for the project. In the final phase, the project is then finished off with it’s most important features and then delivered. In agile, the project is worked on in smaller more manageable pieces. The team might decide to work on whichever part of the project is most valued by the product owner. So that part has the foundation built, improved, then delivered all in one sprint. In each successive sprint the next most valuable part of the project is produced and delivered, with each sprint producing something that works. This gives the team the advantage of having a completed deliverable each sprint along with much more flexibility than traditional project management.

If after seeing how the deliverable of one sprint performs, either over or under-performing, you can change the direction your project is going on the fly. So if after the first sprint you find the initial plan was producing something that would not have much value you wouldn’t be stuck spending all your resources producing something that will end up being a waste. Sometimes the traditional project would end up with a product that couldn’t even be delivered. Traditional project management may seem like a more natural way when first thinking about how to plan a project. It’s even one of the biggest difficulties encountered by newer agile teams. This is not only a way to split up a project’s workload but is a different way to approach delivering the work.

Sources:

"Agile at Work: Planning with Agile User Stories." www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Agile-Work-Planning-Agile-User-Stories/175074-2.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2017

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