It may not be completely evident at first, but software development teams that follow an agile methodology are often exponentially more productive than a team that doesn’t work in an agile fashion.

In fact, it’s estimated through a DeltaMatrix study performed on 8000 samples that agile teams are 25 percent more productive and 50 percent faster to market than non-agile teams.

If you’re trying to get your latest software development completed and on the market, you should seriously think about switching over to an agile team if you haven’t already.

Why Is an Agile Approach so Effective for Productivity?

Simply put, agile is incredibly effective for productivity because it helps keep everyone focused on one task at a time. That’s precisely what teams need to do in order to complete large scope projects. If they try to do too many things at once, they will ultimately fail from being overwhelmed and disorganized.

Agile is incredibly advantageous to software development teams because it focuses on a much smaller scope than a waterfall development method. This makes it easier to accurately estimate a timeline and meet specific short-term deadlines because contributors aren’t taking on too many different components of the project at once.

According to the DeltaMatrix study, when you’re working on a small task that has to meet a shorter deadline, it’s at the forefront of your mind. Because it’s urgent in your mind, you’ll work hard to prioritize the work that help you meet that deadline. Your short-term deadlines in agile are much less likely to be ignored than assigning long-term projects that require prioritizing many different tasks.

For example, if your team is working on performance monitoring, you can do so via smaller, more iterative goals at each sprint. To learn more about the process and discover how you can implement agile thinking and planning into the mix, check out this resource for some actionable insights.

Is an Agile Too Demanding of Your Software Development Team?

Some people are under the impression that running an agile team is too demanding on the development side of things. They believe that running this type of project puts the team under too much pressure when they have to complete a two-week iteration and meet their deadline on time, every time.

This may seem like a difficult task to accomplish, but if the team sets realistic goals and makes sure they give themselves ample time to complete their small portion of the project, it should be a reasonable solution.

Developers should have no trouble reaching their short-term development goal because part of working in sprints is to establish a reasonable time frame. They should become familiar with thinking about time management and understanding how long it takes to finish a particular part of the project so they can meet these shorter deadlines.

Since the project is addressed in smaller increments, managing time and prioritizing tasks in a two-week time frame is much more realistic than trying to predict the time commitment it takes to complete an entirely new feature or deliverable iteration.

What Is the Difference between a Traditional Software Development Team and an Agile Team?

At the end of the day, both teams are going to operate relatively similar in nature, but there’s one major difference between the two. A traditional team is going to work on many different aspects of the project at the same time, whereas an agile team is going to focus on one specific area and keep a tight deadline to complete the iteration.

As you can see, from a fundamental standpoint, the two teams – even though they are working on the same type of software development – are very different in the way they handle their projects. Since we known agile teams are 25% more productive than traditional development teams, it makes sense to consider adopting the mindset to run your team this way, at least on a trial basis.

Conclusion

If you’re putting a software team together, you want to make things easier for your developers. You also want to determine which methods will bring your organization the most success. You can run your team traditionally or adopt an agile mindset and watch your developers become 25% more productive. It’s up to you, so choose wisely.