It’s a question of choosing a methodology according to the needs and features of any project, in which both approaches present advantages and disadvantages.

Working with small cross-functional teams is best suited for agile projects; in contrast, traditional projects tend to work best when handled by larger, more siloed teams with high documentation requirements.

Time

Traditional programme management locks into an approach for their project that they then stick to. By contrast, agile ways of working allow teams to make responses to changes as they happen, rather than having to wait to the end of a phase before implementing change: teams can alter scope within short, time-limited iterations (sprints).

Finally, flexible teams can exploit development- changes to any feature that doesn’t add value to their customers, and put their time and resources towards quality assurance rather than developer debugging.

Agile focuses on constant collaboration, and Cochrane noted that ‘being able to communicate and look each other in the eye all the time’ means teams benefit each other and also help ward off the potential for miscommunications that can sidetrack a project. Agile software tools are often used by the teams to help individuals share information, which keeps them nimble enough to maintain other means of delivering projects that they find most suitable while adopting the practice of agile. For organisations first trying to implement this philosophy, this strikes the right balance.

Money

But rigid objectives and requirements make this approach ill-suited to projects that shift goals substantially along the way, or where the scope or objectives in question substantially change goals for the entire endeavour.

Through a process of incremental and iterative development, agile teams embrace change over time and provide value to customers incrementally.The final product tends to more accurately reflect actual user needs and wants, potentially serving as money-saver by reducing risk through use of incremental, customer-led development, thereby avoiding costly overruns.

At its best, an agile team relies on face-to-face conversation rather than reams of paperwork, draws on team members’ intrinsic motivation and develops ongoing coordination and synchronicity. And built into agile processes are regular lessons-learned check-ins so that teams have the opportunity to reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and then address the root causes of their mistakes.

Risk

You can’t develop a solid project proposal without estimating risks, mitigation action and eventual contingency plans.A key idea that reduces risk in Agile is the way planning times are greatly decreased and uncertainties about costs, schedules and quality become more transparent.

(The in-person communication that agile methods promote goes some way towards explaining how the effective team members can address an issue and how the remaining stakeholders can understand the issues and make the necessary decisions.) Agile methods promote transparency through a focus on documentary artefacts that serve as conduits to client acceptance.

Agile teams release ‘working increments’ frequently (also called ‘sprints’) that boosts the likelihood of catching early mistakes, and also saves money by avoiding debugging costs. Users or stakeholders can provide feedback during each iteration so that changes can be made earlier in the process; this boosts buy-in from customers or stakeholders, productivity by focusing on the right things and avoiding wasting time on unnecessary work; in contrast, traditional approaches may call for long-range upfront planning that can become less and less responsive as requirements shift over time.

Requirements

Authentic human interactions are vital to Agile projects where active customer/client input is needed. Risk management is built into the frequent feedback loops of Agile, which can also easily identify and correct design failures early on in the project, even as the product/project quality improves.

Agile organisations do not use traditional project managers who then assign tasks to company employees working on a project. Instead, they employ self-organising teams, and have a culture of collaboration that helps make your business more employee‐friendly – which is another key way to facilitate the success of your projects.

It encourages teams to produce a working solution rather than a long written description of a proposed solution, which would then need to be amended many times to meet market and customer feedback as the final product takes shape.

While Agile framework brings in many benefits to an organization, some of them are facing challenges implementing this approach, several of which include: lack of predictability (capable of skyrocketing expenses and schedules); difficulties in communicating with stakeholders and staff on a regularbasis; lack of management over its available resources.