Symbolix practice agile development, which means that the client becomes an integral part of the team. This approach ensures faster, more tuned deliverables, and can handle the modern data environment, where data feeds may change day-to-day. As the ‘product-owner’ our clients are regularly involved in status updates and decisions regarding tuning and alteration if need be of staged deliverables.
What is agile?
Agile project management focusses on delivering small incremental, working updates to projects, rather than a linear waterfall (scope, design, build, test, deliver) process. Waterfall is prone to large risk if requirements change during the process.
Agile is based on a basic manifesto:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan.
Teams work as a unit, where everyone is responsible for delivery of the whole set of tasks.
What can I expect?
You can expect project plans that focus on milestones and deliverables throughout projects (not just ‘one big report’ at the very end). We like to focus on incremental deliveries of ‘products’. The product might be draft dashboards, interim analysis results, or workshop summaries. Each delivery will add some insight and ensure you can start working with the ‘product’ as soon as possible.
We don’t believe in disappearing with your data for six months while we build.
Who am I hiring?
One of the big advantages of agile is that you hire a team for each project. We ensure that you have a client liaison that is your own personal point of call, but we tackle the work collectively. So if the project needs a statistician, programmer and business analyst, you will have access to those specialists, not a contractor who is trying to be all three.
What do I need to do?
Our clients take on the role of ‘product owner’, meaning that you have the ultimate input into whether the solution is fit for purpose and you are part of the team. Even though we are (usually) not in your office everyday, we strive for open and active communication and regular feedback as we complete each component of work. We ask our clients to ensure that the product owners are available, and able to make decisions about the direction of the work.