It was with great excitement that my most resent Agile and Scrum 101 course was a hybrid of civil engineers and software developers, the learning’s where phenomenal! You would think in civil engineering as they have a tangible product like a bridge, a building,  a dam etc, and they know every last detail upfront that there would be no place for Agile, that this would be a strictly waterfall approach right, Wrong!

They may know a lot more detail than us as software developers as it would be a little challenging to build a bridge incrementally and to keep changing the design as we went, BUT despite having the design upfront, once the work starts, things as in software development seem to go a little haywire. In civil engineering as in software projects they suffer from scope creep, from missed deadlines and at the end of a project, there are often outstanding monetary claims made, not great for the client who may have signed off on a fixed budget.

Step in Agile!

Agile is not a silverbullet, BUT the benefits it brings to any project, are astounding…

• You have visibility at all levels of the project enabling risks to be addressed sooner rather than later
• You can set and check deliverables on an a incremental basis, 2 week sprints
• You can identify dependencies and ensure they dont trip you up at the last minute
• People meet more regularly having quick 15 min stand ups daily to ensure collaboration and alignment
• Its Lean, fast and fun!

The above points are just a few of the benefits of using an Agile Framework and what could save a company millions by using them! If your company isnt using Agile for its projects its certainly is something you should be thinking about.