The Source Platform & Infrastructure
Guide

Navigating a Smooth Transition to Agile Planning

Streamline your software development projects with Agile planning for enhanced collaboration, more efficient processes, and comprehensive reporting.

When software development teams want to increase efficiencies that lead to results and deliver greater customer satisfaction, they often turn to Agile methods. The Agile planning process focuses on continuous delivery of value, enabling development teams to be flexible as projects change and prioritize the use of customer feedback to drive decisions. Self-organizing teams use this approach to software development to simplify workflows, improve collaboration and visibility, boost customer satisfaction, and automate the time spent on configuration and maintenance.

Agile project planning is leveraged across industries, including:

  • Government agencies: The Agile methodology is a critical component of the Authorization to Operate (ATO) (FedRAMP) journey in federal entities, which is a process used to evaluate new products and manage risk.
  • Financial services: Agile teams support this heavily regulated industry by breaking down large compliance projects into individual tasks, helping teams identify vulnerabilities earlier in development cycles.
  • Technology: A flexible approach helps tech companies quickly adapt in a fast-paced industry, enabling project teams to build secure software faster and achieve their business goals.

However, traditional Agile platforms, such as Jira, are limited to project and issue management and are not fully integrated into the software development lifecycle (SDLC). These unconnected project management tools can lead to a variety of challenges, such as a complex toolchain, technical debt, excessive onboarding time, and a lack of visibility across Agile teams.

GitLab's 2024 Global DevSecOps Report, a survey of over 5,000 DevSecOps professionals, revealed that:

  • 64% of respondents want to consolidate their toolchain
  • 42% of respondents (who also use AI tools) use 6-10 tools in their software development process
  • 26% of respondents said it takes up to 2 months to onboard

While a unified DevSecOps and Agile platform will not solve these challenges alone, it will bring development teams, security, and operations together under shared project goals, reducing complexity and helping teams achieve faster delivery of key features to customers.

Challenges with traditional project management methodologies

Since traditional Agile platforms are not fully integrated into the SDLC and lack support for iterative process management, the disparate tools lead to various problems, including:

Lack of transparency: Separate tools for planning and deployment cause silos in reporting and limit visibility, especially for self-organizing teams managing their sprint backlog. The lack of visibility leads to compliance setbacks and affects future iterations.

Miscommunication: When access to all tools is limited, development teams do not have the necessary insights they need to make informed decisions about their development cycles and upcoming sprints.

Tool complexity: With additional plugins and integrations required, the level of complexity increases, creating repetitive tasks and slowing down the onboarding time for new software developers and overall time to market. This makes it difficult to maintain continuous feedback loops and effective customer collaboration.

Too many licenses: Multiple tools for planning and deployment lead to context switching to keep projects on track. Having project teams work in a centralized platform is beneficial to increase efficiency and effectiveness, especially for daily standups and sprint planning.

Administrative burdens: While customization can be helpful to implement plugins and integrations, the greater the number of customizations, the greater the technical debt — meaning more manual management is required to maintain user experience and workflow efficiency.

Version control and security patching: The more configurations, the more patches are needed to prevent security issues. New versions or upgrades require regression testing, impacting integrations with other tools, and even bringing projects to a standstill.

A DevSecOps platform allows Agile teams to deliver software faster in line with business goals by bringing the entire project team together in a single application, fostering more effective collaboration and streamlining workflows through proven Agile methods.

Read the full ebook to explore how GitLab creates a streamlined Agile approach, and learn strategies to help you transition to Agile practices with ease.

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Navigating a Smooth Transition to Agile Planning

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Key takeaways
  • Agile software development promotes an iterative approach to value delivery that prioritizes continuous feedback and customer collaboration over traditional methods.
  • Traditional Agile project management tools lack direct integration into the software development lifecycle, which can result in issues like miscommunication and tool complexity.
  • Moving to GitLab's Agile approach allows software development teams to integrate Agile frameworks seamlessly within a DevSecOps platform for a more streamlined and collaborative environment.