What is Agile Development?
Agile Development is a software development that is super-hot now, though it began in the mid-1990s, whose collaborative effort is of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customers/end users, under which requirements and solutions evolve. It encourages rapid and flexible responses to change by advocating adaptive planning, early delivery, evolutionary development, and continual improvement. Due to its suitability for an ever-changing business landscape, Agile Software Development methodology has recently gained significant traction inside and outside of IT departments.
The focus on people doing the work and how they work together is what separates Agile from other approaches to software development. In spite of having managers, the agile software development community focuses on collaboration and the self-organizing team who have the ability to find out how they are going to move ahead and approach things on their own. By adopting the Agile Software Development Methodology, organizations are experiencing great success in meeting the fast-paced change of customer needs, offering an iterative approach to the design and development of software. The Agile Software allows delivering working software quickly and more frequently, allowing teams to break the lengthy requirements, build, and test phases down into smaller segments.
Important Features of Agile Development Process
- Sprints: It is an iterative development cycle, where requirements are refined regularly by breaking down the work into small and digestible chunks.
- Scrum Meetings: It is a highly collaborative working style of the team.
- The agile development process results in an ‘inspect and adapt’ approach with internal and external stakeholders by reviewing products and services frequently.
- Due to open interaction with investors and other stakeholders and the project management process, the transparent process may be applied by online Agile Project Management tools like Team Foundation Service, Jira, Trello, Kanbanzie, and others.
Agile Lifecycle
To adapt to change and deliver working software as quickly as possible is the overall goal of each Agile method as there are a variety of Agile Software development (or system development ) methodologies including, Kanban, Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Scrum, Adaptive Software Development, Scrumban, Dynamic Systems Development (DSDM), Extreme Programming (XP), Lean Software Development, Feature Driven Development, etc.
Even though the goal is the same, each method has slight variations in how the phases of software development are defined. Depending upon the specific project or situation, each team’s process flow may vary.
How Agile Development Works?
1. Firstly, a team of testers, developers, and analysts is assembled, known as a cross-functional team. Then a Scrum is being used, working very nearly with the Product Owner/client to act as the head of the team.
2. Next, plan important methods and projects in three to four weeks; a Sprint Planning Meeting takes place in the development cycle, where needs are broken into tasks and hours to provide software developers with a clear and real path to success.
3. When all the necessities of a project are placed in the project backlog during ” Sprint Planning ” and then transferred to the ” sprint backlog ”. Due to the feedback of stakeholders and requirements of evolving business, the product backlog is constantly growing and prioritized again and again.
4. To review work-in-progress during an iteration, Daily Scrums takes place for a max of fifteen minutes.
Three main goals for stand-ups for each team member is:
- What did you achieve yesterday?
- What is your goal for today?
- What hurdles are in your way?
5. A ‘’task board’’ having columns and swim lanes is what Daily Scrums typically revolve around. To break down the key stages of the workflow, it can have more than one column. According to your team and your project, the task board can be structured– get creative! The entire point of Agile is to be open and easy – and not get ‘boxed in.’
6. Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Review meetings are held at the end of the sprint. To get it accepted by the Product Owner, the completed user stories, and ‘show the world’ what you have achieved is what Sprint review focuses on.
Principles of Agile Methodology
- To satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software is the highest priority of Agile Software.
- With a preference to the shorter timescale, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, delivering working software frequently.
- For the customer’s competitive advantage, Agile processes harness change, welcoming changing requirements, even late in development.
- Working together with developers and business people daily throughout the project.
- Trust the motivated individuals to get the job done, giving them the environment and support they need by building projects around motivated individuals.
- Face-to-face conversation within a development team by the most effective and efficient method of conveying information.
- The primary measure of progress in Working Software.
- To be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely by the developers, users, and sponsors, sustainable development is promoted by Agile processes.
- Good Design and Technical excellence enhance agility by continuous attention.
- The self-organizing teams give the best architectures, requirements, and designs.
- The team adjusts its behavior and tunes accordingly at regular intervals, reflecting on how to become more effective.
Advantages of Agile Development
Given below are the advantages mentioned:
- Continuous Improvement: To improve the future iteration, agile encourages feedback from users and team members throughout the whole project.
- Change is Embraced: As the planning cycles are shorter, it is easy to accept changes and accommodate them at any point in time throughout the project.
- End-Goal can be Unknown: For that kind of project where the end-goal is not defined, Agile is very beneficial. The goals will come to light as the project processes.
- Faster, High-Quality Delivery: The team focuses on high-quality development, collaboration, and testing, by breaking down the project into manageable units. The bugs get identified and solve more quickly by conducting testing during each iteration.
- Strong Team Interaction: To take responsibility and own parts of the project, Agile highlights the importance of team working together with frequent communication and face-to-face interaction.
- Customers are Heard: By working very closely with the project team, customers can gain a sense of ownership and have a real impact on the end product by getting many opportunities to see the work being delivered and share their input.
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