Agile demand has increased over the years, this is the reason why aspirants are keen to acquire agile skill set. Due to multiple reasons, which we shall be discussing in this article, agile has become one of the most required career move among professional.
The percentage of organization moving towards agile way of working from traditional ways is increasing and that’s why agile is in demand professionals understand it very well. Any new skill in market is niche till the supply of that skill is not reached equal or more than its demand. For agile, this is still niche. Let’s look at the top reasons one by one due to which agile is one of the popular career move in today’s market.
Reasons for Agile as Careers
More than reasons, these are basically the drivers to move towards agile. This list or topics mentioned below are not complete in any way. There can be many more reasons but from my prospective these are the top reasons.
1. Market dynamics
Today’s market is very dynamic. The mandatory feature in a product today will become not required tomorrow. This fast pace change in requirements and its prioritization is something not feasible to adapt in traditional way of working. The paperwork/process to accommodate change itself is very long in traditional ways that it can never pick the pace of market dynamics. Answer to this is agile and due to the same reason, most of the product development organizations are in need of agile skills. Many are having a separate tracks dedicated for agile
2. Shorted time to market
How the things were working till sometime back? We used to get the requirements from clients and then a complete cycle of design, development, testing and go live used to happen. At the end of this cycle, client used to get the product. There are multiple case studies which shows that by the time product was ready it was either not required in the way it’s developed or completely obsolete.
Today’s market space is different, faster delivery of products is expected in small increments, iteratively. This is only possible when the short cycles of design, development, testing is performed and end product after every cycle is potentially shippable. To achieve this quick time to market agile skill set team is mandatory. This pace is no more optional now a days, it’s mandatory and this ensures agile is implemented which raises its demand in the market.
3. Agile is niche
Though it’s long agile is getting used, still the professionals who have good knowledge and hands on agile experience is niche in market. Demand is more than supply. The very reason for this is more and more usage of agile and leveraging its benefits. In addition to experience working in agile teams, certifications in agile has picked up in the market so that professional can showcase their agile skills.
Many different institutes have started agile certifications and it’s helping professionals. Still, professionals who have working agile knowledge and hold good certification are not available in market easily which makes this skill niche. Niche skills are always paid better and that is the situation for a good technical and agile knowledge professional today.This reason make it all the sense to move towards agile.
4. Multiple roles
Agile is different as compare to traditional way of working. There are multiple agile flavours/methodologies/frameworks available in market working on agile. To name a few are Scrum, XP, Lean, Kanban etc.. Many of these flavours many different roles. E.g. Scrum being the most famous flavour of agile is having three roles i.e.
Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development team. Organizations working in Scrum need all those roles to implement agile/scrum. Each role has its own challenges and working knowledge plus a certification of that role can help professionals a good career path. Similarly other flavours have some similar kind of roles with little different naming convention.
Organizations has also worked on career growth in agile domain. Many organizations created roles which can clearly show a right career path for agile professional even though it’s not defined/mandated in agile literature.
5. Early going advantage
In any skill, if you are among the early goers, you will have advantage of it. People who are working in agile teams and have exposure of one or more agile flavour will be in demand in market. Same is for certified professionals also. Some higher level certifications like PMI-ACP, Certified Scrum professional etc will give advantage to the professionals.
Once you get good amount of experience you an even move into Agile coaching as domain. There are multiple such openings towards which market is shaping up. Organizations are setting up agile competencies so that they can drive in house coaching till execution. This helps professionals to take advantage of it.
6. Agile in Demand
I have kept this point at the end to emphasize that all the above discussed points are valid because of this overall point. Demand of agile skill set in market has been the output of factors like, dynamic market, shorter time to market, customer’s expectation, multiple roles etc. As there a demand and agile is niche at the moment, supply is lower. Due to this reason agile is definitely a career at this point.
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Conclusion
The future is agile and more and more technological advancement which are agile based e.g. DevOps. Career move In agile will become a regular practice in a short period of time as agile will come to the mainstream of work.
It’s time to start working towards that now and take the advantage so that as soon as market is moving towards next advancements, one is ready to adopt it. If at that time, one starts the agile journey, s/he will be left behind and would not be able to pick up the pace.
That’s the very point considering which professionals has to start their career move towards agile way of working as early as possible.
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