Does agile development make an easier sell?

Agile development offers many advantages during the build of an applications.  By following the Principles of Agile Software, I strongly believe that development teams as well as the clients they're working with can see significant benefits.  Since the benefits are already well documented, I'm going to assume that you all buy into this thought. 

As you can tell by my previous post I've been thinking a good deal recently about how to sell larger technical projects.  I'm specifically interested in large .NET jobs if you can believe that

Can the principles of agile software help sell larger technical jobs to clients?  I think so.  One of the problems I often see in the sales cycle lies in the fact that our prospective clients can't *really* trust us.  We can instill some trust by telling them about our past successes, and by showing them some examples of our work, however, I don't think that gets us far enough.   They need more then a couple of pretty pictures and a nice story.  We need to reduce their risk.  We need to gain their trust.  We need to show them that we are experts.  We need them to see that we understand their problems, and even better we know how to develop solutions that can fix their problems.

How does agile help us?  Agile projects focus on short iterations.  After each iteration we deliver a working piece of software.  Following the iteration the client has a couple of different options.  They can tell us to get working on the next iteration, they can change the focus of our development efforts, or they can terminate the development all together.  When I look at this from a clients point of view this sounds pretty darn good.  I get to see what kind of work we do, with only a couple weeks investment.  I don't have to hand over a big lump of money and hope that in the end I get what I want.  I get to see the direction the project is going every couple weeks.  I get to be involved, I can actually change my mind without dealing with change order, as a client I like what I get out of agile.  I think agile can make selling large technical jobs easier. 

What do you think?

# re: Does agile development make an easier sell?

Friday, January 16, 2004 12:11 AM by Darrell    
Careful in how you view it, customers are not as logical and rational as we (developers) are!

There are benefits to agile, just as there are disadvantages. These need to be matched to the project-problem domain. With the youthfulness of the agile movement, the answers to these questions are still being worked out.

# re: Does agile development make an easier sell?

Friday, January 16, 2004 12:13 AM by Steve    
"customers are not as logical and rational as we (developers) are!"

Doh! I always forget that important point :)

# re: Does agile development make an easier sell?

Friday, January 16, 2004 9:00 PM by Udi Dahan - The Software Simplist    
Following my previous comment ( <a target="_new" href="http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/posts/5674.aspx#5714">http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/seichert/posts/5674.aspx#5714</a> ), unless your clients understand the differences in methodologies ( which is RARELY the case ), its a waste of time to get into it.

What you're selling is a solution to their problem. Moreso, you're selling yourself AS the solution to their problem. You may include some benefits of choosing you over competitors that come from the agile world - responsiveness to change, etc... - but getting into the technobabble won't win you any points.

# re: Does agile development make an easier sell?

Friday, January 16, 2004 9:59 PM by Steve    
I guess it largely depends on who your clients are. If they're used to dealing with consultancies and the problems that can happen when working with them, its possible they might understand. I agree that if you get too mcuh into the technobabble they'll just disregard you. However, I do believe that their are ways to sell some advantages of agile even to those who don't understand or care about methodologies. The message certainly has to be delivered very differently, however, I think the way you go about solving their problem is very much apart of what they buy into.

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