Agile Methodology for Business and Workflow Management

What is Agile?

Agile is a project management methodology that focuses on the practice of breaking down a project into subprojects usually referred to as sprints. Each sprint is then assigned to a team member and is reviewed regularly until its completion. Sprints usually take a few weeks and should not be longer than a month. Thereafter if the sprint is successfully executed, team leads would start a new sprint of a sub-project and the cycle continues. 

The main logic of Agile Project Management is the constant delivery and progress check of teammates throughout the length of a certain project instead of an all at once scenario. Agile allows teams to work on projects, solving problems or challenges that may arise at every stage before proceeding to the next. The structure also embraces the idea of change. If a certain process is not working it is easier to make and plan for changes in a certain sprint and thereafter progress. 

Is Agile Project Management for everyone?

Initially, Agile has been embraced by Software Developers who needed a structure that could make the Software Development Life Cycle  much shorter. In modern day, many industries have adopted Agile and applied it to their workflow management systems to help in tracking various roles and responsibilities in teammates and manage deadlines. 

For businesses, Agile methodology has helped in formulating re-marketing strategies and fastening up the sales funnel process. 

How does it work and how can we apply it? Below are a few case studies. 

Automation + Agile methodology for business: How HelloDuty helps in fastening up the sales funnel process

Every business experiences different lengths in the sales funnel. While this might be dependent on the type of customer, it will majorly depend on the systems that have been put into place to fasten up the process. 

For this particular electronics business, they have been looking at how they can implement a strategy to improve their sales funnel process day by day. Wiq’s electronics has an online store on Facebook and Instagram and they sell the latest electronic gadgets from smartphones to laptops to gaming consoles. They decided to adopt agile methodology to help them advertise their products better and consistently across all their channels, engage with their leads and customers efficiently and also to improve on their customer retention.

For better customer experience and lead management Wiq’s electronics store also decided to automate their business process and adopt the HelloDuty CRM. This is a powerful sales tool that will assist the store’s team to efficiently keep records of customers, track and produce reports on progress. 

After adopting the CRM and Agile for business workflow management Wiq’s electronic store will be able to execute step by step strategies to win over customers on their social media platforms. After holding their pre-sprint planning meeting, the first sprint would be to launch Facebook and Instagram ads campaign. After the launch, HelloDuty CRM will then assist in collecting and managing the leads or potential customers who have shown interest in the gadgets advertised. The next sprint would be to sort the information collected by the CRM and the sales team would now take part in contacting the leads using the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) feature of the CRM. The CRM will also assist in recording information from the customer interactions to ease of remembrance. 

Next sprint would be to take orders from interested customers and track their purchase records. After that the next sprint would be to launch a re-marketing strategy targeting all leads who have not yet subscribed to the store’s products. The CRM would aid in recalling conversations or interactions with these leads so as to ensure a continuous process in engagement which is good customer experience.

This case study shows how Agile + Automation fastens up the sales funnel process, makes it more efficient and easy to handle, something that is usually a pain for marketers and sales teams all over. 

Agile for workflow Management Example 

This business has a wide network of customers and leads collected from various marketing campaigns online and offline. They have been experiencing a lot of challenges trying to keep track of all their customers and manage their records efficiently using spreadsheets and hardcopy books. Through a lot of consultation and research they decided to adopt the HelloDuty CRM to help them with their situation. From these interactions, the team leads decide to create a backlog for the migration of data from their traditional record keeping system to their newly integrated CRM. A backlog is a list of tasks that need to be completed at the end of each sprint to achieve a certain goal.

The team will then hold a pre-sprint meeting to discuss the backlog of tasks and arrange according to order of execution in each sprint. Each team member will have a role in a particular sprint. These roles are popularly referred to as tickets for most people who use JIRA as their project management software which we will expound later on in this article. At the beginning of each day, the team will hold very brief meetings called stand-ups. In stand-ups team members are required to report what they were working on the previous day, what they will be working on the current day and any accomplishments or challenges they might be experiencing. 

At the end of each sprint, the team leads will hold a meeting to review all the work that has been done, any backlogs, any challenges and any indications of change. If there are backlogs, they will then be pushed to the next sprint in the next pre-sprint planning meeting.

This example shows how projects or workflows are broken down into small tasks for ease of management and increase in team productivity. 

Tools used for Agile Project Development

In this age of automation and digitalization, Agile product Management is done using software tools that assist in running sprints, tracking project or workflow processes and encouraging team collaboration. Here is a list of the best Agile software tools that are used today and YouTube Tutorials for visualisation:

1. JIRA

Jira offers product backlog management, sprint management and bugs or issue tracking. It is versatile and customizable. 

2. Asana 

Asana is best known for planning, organizing and tracking progress of tasks from start till finish. 

3. ClickUp 

ClickUp is best known for its intuitive UI and rich set of customizable features to manage workflows. It also has a chat feature. 

4. Trello

Trello is best known for its list style and visually pleasing components. It also has a checklist feature. 

Leverage Agile for your Project and Workflow Management

If you are looking for a methodology or structure that will assist in step by step project or workflow management and increasing team productivity each day then Agile might be the best approach. 

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