Agile methods and frameworks continue to take the project management world by storm and are also getting increasingly popular in the Dutch enterprise landscape. Unfortunately, fine-tuning budgeting and resource allocation to agile approaches remains a serious problem for many organizations. It often proves difficult to square current methods of financial control with the basic principles of agile product
development. In this article, we will show you how to adopt a budgeting approach
that aligns important financial control goals with agile working principles.

The Rise of Agile Workflows

Although the umbrella term “agile” is often associated with the dynamic world of software development, agile approaches have become increasingly popular with a wide variety of other organizations that need to be flexible and capable of responding to new market and customer demands. Agile is pretty much the exact opposite of traditional
approaches like the waterfall and stage-gate models. These are based on phases executed successively in a certain order and way. Agile development, on the other hand, is defined and characterized by iterations. It does not rely on predefined phases but converges towards solutions in increments. Additionally, agile approaches put a
strong emphasis on selforganization, cooperation, and emergence. Agile projects do not
rely on a rigid and predefined plan.

But why has the agile approach gained so many adherents and followers in recent times? The high degree of flexibility is an important part of the answer. Agile workflows allow companies to remain fully focused on the products and services that they want to launch, whilst giving development or project teams the opportunity to adapt their approach as they go. Ideally, agile development enables overall adaptation and proactive reactions to new challenges. The method even allows you to make
last-moment changes to a product if unexpected environmental influences or
certain market conditions demand this.