Why does Brick Factory use an agile web development process?

At Brick Factory, we try to be flexible with our approach to building websites. We try to adapt to the needs of our projects and clients, as opposed to dictating a process. But we often recommend taking an Agile approach to website builds and other projects, because it offers significant benefits.

Agile ensures that you stay in control of your build and your budget throughout the process. It also dramatically reduces the risk for us and for you - the risk of us doing work that you didn’t understand or didn’t value, and your risk of receiving an end-product that doesn’t meet your needs.

You in Control

It is almost impossible to make all of the design and functional decisions about a site before getting hands-on experience with it. The reality of web development is that things always change as the build progresses. This used to lead to wasted budget and blown timelines as these realizations were made too late in the process to change course.

Agile allows you to make adjustments to approach and priorities as the project progresses - as you get real experience with your new site and are able to make fully informed decisions about how to prioritize features and functionality. Agile keeps you in the driver’s seat of your project - giving us feedback as we work and ensuring that we focus on the features that matter most to you.

Budget Control

Keeping you involved throughout the build and allowing you to adjust priorities also has a strong positive effect on budget control. The fact is that many features on a site are rarely or never used. Unused features waste budget - the time to plan and build - and also increase long-term maintenance costs for the site. We often find that many of the lower-priority features discussed in the Discovery Phase are no longer needed once you are able to test the in-progress site.

The Agile process lets you adjust budget allocation at every step of the build, focusing on high-value features and testing the site with real users before deciding to move ahead with riskier/lower-value components. Agile also provides a more efficient management process, helping us put more of our team’s time into your product.

Reduced Risk

Agile prioritizes completing priority features before moving on to the next stage of development. This ensures that you have a product with real value from the very beginning instead of having a half-done site that is not really worth anything until finished. It also allows you to stop development at any time - creating an opportunity to launch interim products and for real world usage and feedback to inform future development decisions.

This iterative development naturally ensures that you get progress updates regularly throughout the build - a system that quickly surfaces miscommunications and makes sure we aligned with your vision.

Overall, using an Agile development process reduces risk for you and for us, helping us collaborate as a team to make sure that we are focusing your development budget on the features that matter most.