Agile Product Development: What Retail Brands Need to Know

Agile product development is an approach to conceptualizing, designing and iterating products that’s based on the Agile Manifesto, which is focused on collaboration, feedback and constant improvement cycles known as “sprints.” 

Unlike traditional waterfall approaches to design, where each phase must be completed before the next begins, agile emphasizes working in short, focused bursts. These short cycles are often two to four weeks in length but can vary by product, team and industry. 

For many product teams and designers, agile product development is about embracing uncertainty rather than resisting it. Instead of attempting to predict every requirement and constraint upfront, smart agile teams work in adaptive cycles that allow them to respond to new information. 

Stakeholders who are comfortable with being uncomfortable can find growth opportunities in agile product development that simply don’t exist for teams that must have structured, predictable routines.

This (relatively) recent approach to product design can be traced back to the Agile Manifesto, created in 2001 by a group of software developers who outlined four core values and 12 principles that prioritize individuals and interactions over rigid processes, working products over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation and responding to change over following a predetermined plan.

The 12 principles of agile, when adapted for product development beyond software, create a powerful framework for modern product teams. The entire 12 principles can be found at the original The Agile Manifesto but in general, they focus on the following concepts. 

Customer focus

Rather than waiting until the end of a long development cycle, agile teams focus on delivering working prototypes, features or product increments that customers can evaluate and provide feedback on throughout the process.

Market conditions shift, customer preferences evolve and competitive landscapes change. Agile teams view late-stage requirement changes not as disruptions but as valuable market intelligence that helps create more relevant products.

Cross-functional collaboration

Product managers, designers, engineers and stakeholders work together continuously rather than handing off work between departments in isolated phases.

Rather than relying on top-down management, agile empowers teams to determine how best to accomplish their objectives, leading to greater ownership and innovative problem-solving.

Simplicity and efficiency

Teams focus intensely on features and capabilities that deliver genuine customer value, avoiding the feature creep that often plagues traditional development approaches.

Continuous attention to quality throughout the process, rather than relegating quality assurance to the end, enhances the team’s ability to adapt and iterate.

Continuous improvement

Teams regularly pause to reflect on what’s working, what isn’t and how to improve both their processes and their products.

Rather than relying on heroic efforts and crunch periods, agile promotes a steady, maintainable rhythm that teams can sustain over time. For organizations focusing on sustainable goods, this also allows them to continually improve their green initiatives in order to make their sustainability goals.

Because many of the agile principles circle back to the others, the core benefits of agile product development are also cyclical in nature. They include enhanced product outcomes, higher product relevance, improved product quality and better alignment between teams. 

Those results cascade down into entire product lifecycles, so that iterations made at one stage can benefit teams downstream. When implemented effectively, agile allows teams to pivot quickly when market conditions change or new opportunities emerge, rather than being locked into plans created months earlier.

By delivering working product increments regularly, teams can get products to market faster and begin gathering real-world feedback sooner. This shortened feedback loop means course corrections happen while they’re still relatively inexpensive to implement.

At its core, the collaboration and feedback required to implement agile successfully leads to continuous customer involvement throughout the development process. This ensures the final products delivered to market addresses actual user needs rather than assumptions made months or years earlier and in theory.

Agile product development approaches are implemented with structural changes and mindset shifts. One without the other may limit the benefits of agile and can cause even the most well-intentioned teams to question its effectiveness.

The roadmap to implementation starts from the ground up, from an organization’s core vision and goals to its detailed, day-to-day processes. Here’s what that looks like. 

Define product vision

Begin with clarity about what’s being built and why. Work with stakeholders to establish a clear product vision that can guide decision-making throughout the development process. This vision should be specific enough to provide direction but flexible enough to accommodate learning and changes.

Form agile teams

Create small, empowered teams that include all the skills needed to deliver working product increments. Depending on the product, this might include product managers, designers, engineers, quality assurance specialists and subject matter experts. Teams should typically be 5-9 people and large enough to have diverse skills but small enough to communicate effectively.

Maintain a product backlog

Develop a prioritized list of features, improvements and capabilities that need to be built. This backlog should be dynamic, with items regularly added, refined and reprioritized based on customer feedback, market changes and new learning.

Execute in sprints

Work in fixed time periods (usually 2-4 weeks) with clear objectives for each sprint. Each sprint should include planning, daily check-ins, a demo of completed work and a retrospective to discuss what went well and what could be improved.

Integrate with supporting systems

Agile product development requires robust collaboration and communication tools. Digital platforms that enable real-time collaboration, version control and stakeholder feedback are essential. For physical products, this might include product lifecycle management solutions systems that can handle rapid iteration and change management. 

These platforms can support agile development by providing real-time visibility into product data, facilitating collaboration across global teams and managing the complexity of iterative design changes.

Iterate based on feedback

After each sprint, incorporate learnings from user testing, stakeholder feedback and team retrospectives into the next cycle. This continuous improvement approach ensures the product evolves in response to real-world insights rather than theoretical assumptions.

The main difference between agile and waterfall methodologies is in their approach to uncertainty and change management. Waterfall typically follows a linear, structured process that requires one phase to be completed before the next can begin. 

For some products, this is necessary and helpful. But for others, especially those that have constant customer feedback and requests for iteration, agile provides a more flexible approach. In agile, product teams have no choice but to embrace uncertainty, constant change and frequent feedback that is all used to determine future product changes and iterations. 

Rather than trying to define every product requirement upfront, as waterfall does, agile attempts to gather and implement feedback in short sprints that make it easier to quickly execute on collaborative feedback. This method is more flexible but requires more tolerance for ambiguity, changing directions and ongoing decision-making. For some organizations and teams, that constant state of flux can be demanding and stressful.

Finally, a last core difference between the two methods comes down to customer involvement. In waterfall, product stages are typically laid out and executed independent of any customer feedback or involvement in the “middle” of the process. Customer feedback is collected and examined before and after the development process, so it’s still a factor but agile embraces feedback throughout the entire process, from beginning to middle to end. 

This change in feedback loops makes agile more iterative and able to quickly inject customer feedback, both positive and negative, into future development decisions. Waterfall product design, on the other hand, must endure longer cycles before feedback can be incorporated into future products. 

It’s worth noting that depending on the industry, team or organization, a hybrid approach can often be most effective: with the flexibility of agile and the structure of waterfall, teams can stick to a predefined plan while still incorporating elements of agile feedback into their development workflows. This can be particularly useful in regulated industries that require complex supply chains often vulnerable to changes or disruptions in the marketplace.

Agile product development empowers brands to move faster, stay focused on their customers and deliver higher-quality products with less waste and delay. Though agile unlocks flexibility and speed, it also demands real-time coordination, visibility and collaboration across every team and stage of the product lifecycle.

That’s where Centric PLM Software™ empowers a product design team. Designed to support agile design methodologies at scale, Centric PLM connects people, processes and product data in one collaborative platform. From concept to launch, teams gain full transparency, accelerate decision-making and reduce costly bottlenecks, all without sacrificing control or compliance. connects people, processes and product data in one collaborative platform. From concept to launch, teams gain full transparency, accelerate decision-making and reduce costly bottlenecks, all without sacrificing control or compliance.