The value of agile project delivery

Agile advocates an adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery and continual improvement approach to software development.
Looking at this statement, it becomes crystal clear that, when it comes to IT project management, agile is the way to go.
If we descend a level deeper and take a look at the agile manifesto, the unchallenged benefits are even more obvious.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

In today’s ever-evolving and ever-changing CMS industry it is paramount to close the digital gap - what experience they can offer versus what our users need and want. Therefore, the question is: Can we afford not to be agile?

Traditional CMSs

If we take a look at the way traditional CMSs work, it’s become painfully obvious that they tend to enforce a waterfall approach. The separate phases of development are dependent on one another. Content editors have to wait until developers have finished configuring and testing the system, which are two separate phases as well.
Taking Wordpress, for example, the project management style is dictated by its architecture and main approach. Wordpress and other monolithic CMSs use a website-first approach. This means that it’s near impossible for the different teams (developers, designers, marketers etc.) to work together.
The stages are clearly defined as separate phases, making it, indistinguishably, a waterfall approach.
A lot of times traditional CMSs offer out-of-the-box solutions and there is no point to involve the developers too early in the process, there is not much functionality they can add, there is not much room for solution finding.
Same goes for testers. The testing phase can’t really start until the website is deployed. By then budget and time constraints won’t allow any major changes.

Headless CMSs

The headless CMS market has gained a lot of traction and attention in the last few years. In fact, we may be as bold as to say that any digital agency who practices organizational ambidexterity should at least have heard of the headless CMS.
With a headless CMS your teams have the capability to work agile, no matter what. Content editors and developers can start working on their part at the same time, without worrying about the design. Similarly, the designer can focus on delivering a great experience without worrying about the restrictions a monolithic CMS would impose.
Equipped with reusable content modules, custom workflows, versioning, custom user permissions and approval processes they can plan, test, re-edit, schedule and publish content. There is room for mistakes and repairs before the content reaches the users.
This also translates to increased productivity, quicker time-to-market, less overhead, and control over the branding message.

Agile project delivery with Storyblok

Here is how Forrester defines an agile CMS “With a nod to both developers and practitioners, agile CMS seeks to enable collaborative, iterative approaches to content and experiences that satisfy both sides of the house.”

Storyblok empowers content creators and website developers to bring digital experiences to market rapidly through a combination of publishing, workflow and collaboration tools. It is a content hub where all team members can collaborate on putting forth efficient content operations. It is a back-end only content management system built as a content repository that makes content accessible via API (Application Programming Interface) to be displayed on any device and channel.

With Storyblok, you can take a strategic approach to managing and publishing content. Features like integration with Optimizely for analytics, custom workflows (more on that later), versioning, custom user permissions and approval processes will help you plan, test, re-edit, schedule and publish your content.

The same agile, reiterative, approach is applied to content delivery. Siloed content which is prone to errors and difficult to manage, becomes a thing of the past.

Key take-away

By combining agile methodologies with a headless CMS you achieve satisfied customers, a greatly improved quality in process management, more adaptive and flexible teams, easier prediction of costs and other resource estimates and better communication. All these boil down to better services and a successful business model.