Topic

How to embrace changing requirements however late in the project cycle - an Agile Principle

Response

The principle is:

Agile teams WELCOME CHANGING requirements, even late in life cycle processes because it enables them to harness change for the benefit of the customer.

Accepting change is enviable, means when it occurs, it’s not a surprise. Enabling agile team to evaluate and adjust to accommodate both internal and external factors, planned or otherwise will result in a better offering, product, service or solution.

The life cycle process adopted by Agile is based on the PDCA cycle (plan, do, check and adjust), which ensures the Agile Team is constantly orientated towards better understanding their customer needs. Breaking down the work into a series of iterations, which concludes with a planned Adjust stage, ensures feedback from their customers are evaluated as apart of a well managed change management process.

Should for any reason, the Agile Team discover they completely misunderstood the customer’s needs or failed to deliver something of value at the end of the iteration, the cost (either financial or time) is limited to just the last iteration. In severe of circumstances a full rollback maybe required. However, a moderate adjustments is typically required. This planned approach to change management, acts both an opportunity to improve and avoids a catastrophic situation occurring towards the end of a traditional life cycle process.

Discover more

Additional information, including working examples and templates are available in the Monetical knowledge base.