It’s Time for the SMB Market to Move to Agile Away from WaterFall

The classic web design question we get, on what feels like a daily basis is, how much does it cost? Can we get a quote?
Everyone wants to know how much a project is going to cost.
The problem with this is that, in almost all cases, to perfectly quote a project requires a large amount of discovery and fine tuning many details. These discoveries, in almost all cases throughout the project, will change. Those changes should and will affect project costs.
The paradigm of fixed bid website work needs to change. Small businesses, and even larger business’, stuck in this paradigm, I believe, will struggle to pay their bills in 10 years, maybe even sooner. Why? Well, the success rate of such projects is not very high because of scope creep, poor work due to underbids, and many other variables.
The world is changing faster than almost anyone can keep up with. Technologies are built on top of technologies. We are now standing on the shoulders of giants, and soon, we will be standing on giants standing on even larger giants, and so forth.
Many companies that are not prepared for this technological shift will wind up like the Taxi cab companies, destroyed in a less than a decade by a few mobile app technology companies.
To prepare for this shift, it is so important that businesses start to think in an agiler driven technology mindset. Now, don’t get me wrong, everyone has a budget and can only spend so much money for a project. Therefore, identifying the major requirements and getting a good sense of the project costs are extremely important to all businesses. However, spending inordinate amounts of time trying to identify the exact requirements and find the suckers willing to bid low on a fixed quote for those requirements, or even worse, bid on no requirements, is not a winning solution. In most cases, you will end up with a half-finished solution, or simply not get what you wanted.
One of, if not the most successful implementation projects we worked on at Trellis, was by no accident, an agile-based project. There were some upfront requirements gathering and waterfall methodology but the project was run as an hourly project and done in an agile sprint format. In 12 weeks, the site was completely re-platformed to be on a new eCommerce platform with all major integrations in place.
By paying for and adjusting the resources, as needed, throughout the lifecycle of the project, things moved quickly, and there was no hesitancy due to scope creep or a rigid SOW fixed bid based project.
Fixed bid/waterfall projects can become disastrous for many reasons. They put a lot of pressure on accurate quoting on up-front requirements. They also make the scope change process brutal and slow because it was not budgeted for.
Why WaterFall Will Slow You Down:

• It requires immense up-front time to quote
• Could be under quoted and result in lack of resources
• Requires rigid SOW and project plan
• Inability to make adjustments without revisiting cost and SOW
• Unlikely to make accurate deadlines and budget
• Poor ability to manage unforeseen roadblocks

Agile companies are going to move faster, do projects faster, and thus, move forward with technology much faster. Companies of all sizes that embrace this will not only be better prepared for the future but move ahead of competitors who are stuck in the fixed bid mindset.
Agile development doesn’t mean you can’t do some waterfall things as well as prepare for a budget. It simply means you need to become more flexible and amenable to change during your development and web projects so that you can adapt and prepare for changes throughout the project. Once you realize that software projects and websites constantly evolve and often require unknown hurdles that can only be uncovered once work begins, your methodology for working with third parties and internal resources must change as well.