Introduction 

The report highlights details regarding the understanding of the foundation and origin of Agile processes and methods. In current business scenario with extreme competition in the market, organisations are increasingly utilising agile methodologies as an approach for project management for the sole purpose of achieving the company’s objectives and goals. There are certain features of Agile which adds value to an organisation and aids in its customer satisfaction endeavour. The report holds information on lean management, influence of agile practices, scrum and Kanban, lastly the values added by the same to any organisation. 

Origination of Agile and  Agile principles 

The start and development of agile methodology in the world of software development was to develop new and accurate methods of managing software development assignments and projects. In the earlier days, there report of failures or tardiness were high which lead to the realisation of the industry leaders that there is a high requirement of finding an innovative and new approach to reduce rate of failures and delays (Rasnacis & Berzisa, 2017). The manifesto of Agile software was created in the year 2001 which was signed by the representatives from Pragmatic Programming, Feature Driven Development, Crystal, DSDM, SCRUM, Extreme Programming and others. This alliance was the stepping stone of the now utilised various agile methodologies. In the initial days it was designed with the primary objective of managing the development process of software projects, but with time agile has evolved in handling projects across all markets, organisation and industries. The twelve agile principles in the agile manifesto includes values of satisfying customer through continuous ad early delivery, second principle holds the statement regarding embracing change according to the requirement. Frequency of delivery with the preference of the shorter timescale and building projects which includes, open line of communication are all mentioned in the agile manifesto. The manifesto mentions that the primary form of measuring progress is through that of a working software and continuous attention for good design and technical excellence enhances agility with simplicity (Cooper & Sommer 2018). These were kept in mind which is required in developing fruitful software and providing customer satisfaction. Software projects are seen to rarely have the similar stability as that of traditional projects. Businesses are growing, and with the market becoming stiffer in regard to competition require high volume of change. Agile refers to an improved method of release and development of software.  Chief ideology of Agile is to make work visual, problems visible and minimising the WIP or work in process, maintaining batch size, creation of empowered teams and constant interaction with the customers. At the core, the methodologies was completely based on respect and trust for on e another thus promoting the models of companies basing out of people, improving overall business processes to create communities for a encouraging and productive working style.

Lean Process and principles 

Lean manufacturing originated from Toyota Production System which is also referred to as JIT Production or Just In Time production. Toyota had a different business process compared to that of the American automotive industry. The company gained immense success after the WW2 when Japan started adopting American quality and production techniques. The fundamental of Toyota’s production process came from statistical quality processes and manufacturing methods from that of Henry Ford and Edward Deming respectively. The company encouraged their employees to be also a part of the production process which lead the organisation to introduce into scene quality cycles. Quality cycles are group of workers meeting for the purpose of discussing methods to improve workplace quality. These group later goes on to present to the management with respect to production quality (Sanders et al., 2017). There were procedures developed for aiding in reducing changeover time and setup time. The ultimate goal of adopting lean manufacturing is to reduce waste and if the manufacturing methods are outdated, the system will generate high amount of waste. Lean manufacturing process significantly aids in improving material handling, customer satisfaction, quality and inventory (Sukiennik & Bąk, 2019). By implementing lean manufacturing, the outbound and inbound queues can be smaller which in turn reduces inventory level. Material handling benefits include that of shorter travel distances, fewer material movement and easy routing. These aids in improving quality and saving inventory. A smaller lot makes it easy to identify any significant quality issue which can be taken care of during the manufacturing process, enabling the organisation to save cost, resources and time. Lean management aids in customer satisfaction process. Improvements in quality of product, inventory, material handling adds to the success of the manufacturing process. Timely delivery and high quality standard enhances customer satisfaction significantly this reducing the incidence of customer complaints, returns and repairs. 

In today’s world, the success of an organisation depends on the organisation’s capability to deliver value to their customers as well as their employees. This requires organisations to indentify faster methods in delivering and moving high quality and services to their customers  while promoting stability and healthy work culture. Agile was designed as an iterative time focused way in achieving delivery. The goal of agile lies in making the development process flexible through frequent and small iterations. Lean management’s goal lies in developing sustainable processes by continuously improving the manufacturing processes. Listening to the consumers and incorporating customer feedback lies in the core value of both lean and agile. Lean and agile process involves elements of continuous improvement and continuous delivery, enabling in optimising the whole value stream of the process. Agile focuses on product evolution for the purpose of meeting customer requirements and lean methods enable the continuous improvement. Lead and Agile system empowers cross functional teams, utilisation of managers in the role of managers and lastly utilisation of continuous improvement methods. 

Scrum and Kanban

Scrum provides a framework that enable the workers to address complex adaptive problems and at the same time delivering products creatively and productively of that of highest possible standards. The lightweight structure aids organisations, people and team in generating value by the process of adaptive solutions for any type of complex challenges, Scrum is not a methodology but it implements scientific method of empiricism (Lei, et al., 2017). The framework is designed to replace programmed codes method with that of a heuristic kind in regard for self organisation and individuals to solve critical problems and deal with unpredictability. Kanban is a workflow management approach for the purpose of improving, managing and defining services which will deliver knowledge (Alqudah & Razali 2018). Kanban aims in visualising of work, continuous improvement and maximising efficiency. Flexibility involved allows in overlaying of processes, workflows and systems without any particular disruptions and the versatility allows in easy introduction in all kinds of work environment. Team roles in the Scrum system is divided into development master, scrum master and product owner, each of them has assigned tasks for them, teams are required to be crossfunctional.. In Kanban the team works on the same board from different aspects and the cross functionality is null and void as workflow is utilised by every project teams (Saleh, Huq & Rahman 2019). 

Value offered by Agile to an Organisation

Agile promotes an iterative development process which means that the versions are realised ahead of any features developed. This aids in multiple benefits to realise soon for stakeholders to review and provide feedback on for rest of the development process. Agile greatly reduces project risk as the short iterations and continuous feedback enables in reducing failure possibility which would usually be high in development processes following other methodologies. Agile processes enables faster product releases enabling to easily measure customer reaction for the same and altering the product accordingly keeping in mind the market competition. A prime principle of Agile process is that user or employee involvement is encouraged and imperative from the initiation times (Azanha, et al., 2017). Change is embraced, enabling organisations to accept change at the earliest resulting in higher customer satisfaction through development of suitable product and less investment. Agile process adds value through encouraging continuous expansion of knowledge through self learning resulting in self ware, more focused Agile methodology and team. Agile process enables high project visibility for stakeholders meaning high control on progress of project this aiding in ensuring stakeholder’s expectations. Being a member of a self appraising, self organising and autonomous process and team allowing scope for innovation and creativity, at the same time boosting the moral of the team leading to a productive and positive work ambience with faster delivery process and quality service, leading to high customer satisfaction. 

Conclusion

Utilising Agile process and lean management principles in an organisation system enables in creating value and delivering quality product to the customers. Agile was designed as an iterative time focused way in achieving delivery. The goal of agile lies in making the development process flexible through frequent and small iterations. The ultimate goal of adopting lean manufacturing is to reduce waste and if the manufacturing methods are outdated, the system will generate high amount of waste. These methodologies aids in achieving high customer satisfaction and gaining an edge in the competitive market. 

Reference 

Alqudah, M., & Razali, R. (2018). An empirical study of Scrumban formation based on the selection of scrum and Kanban practices. Int. J. Adv. Sci. Eng. Inf. Technol, 8(6), 2315-2322.

Azanha, A., Argoud, A. R. T. T., de Camargo Junior, J. B., & Antoniolli, P. D. (2017). Agile project management with Scrum: A case study of a Brazilian pharmaceutical company IT project. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business.

Cooper, R. G., & Sommer, A. F. (2018). Agile–Stage-Gate for Manufacturers: Changing the Way New Products Are Developed Integrating Agile project management methods into a Stage-Gate system offers both opportunities and challenges. Research-Technology Management, 61(2), 17-26.

Lei, H., Ganjeizadeh, F., Jayachandran, P. K., & Ozcan, P. (2017). A statistical analysis of the effects of Scrum and Kanban on software development projects. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 43, 59-67.

Rasnacis, A., & Berzisa, S. (2017). Method for adaptation and implementation of agile project management methodology. Procedia Computer Science, 104, 43-50.

Saleh, S. M., Huq, S. M., & Rahman, M. A. (2019, February). Comparative study within Scrum, Kanban, XP focused on their practices. In 2019 International Conference on Electrical, Computer and Communication Engineering (ECCE) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Sanders, A., Subramanian, K. R., Redlich, T., & Wulfsberg, J. P. (2017, September). Industry 4.0 and lean management–synergy or contradiction?. In IFIP international conference on advances in production management systems (pp. 341-349). Springer, Cham.

Sukiennik, M., & Bąk, P. (2019). The formation of organizational culture in the aspect of lean management principles in the energy industry. In E3S Web of Conferences (Vol. 108, p. 01033). EDP Sciences.