Agile Advantages for Software Development and Your Business
WHAT IS AGILE?
Agile methodology is an iterative, time-boxed, people-oriented and result-focused approach to software delivery that builds software incrementally from the start of the project, instead of delivering it all at once near the end.
Agile methodology is aligned with the values and principles described in the Agile Manifesto for Software Development. According to this principle, requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously; teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.
AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW
Agile methods began appearing in the early 1990s as the software industry exploded. Traditional software development approaches appeared to many software developers to be too rigid and resulting in over-budgeting and delays. Then in February 2001, a group of 17 independent practitioners, leading software engineers met in Snowbird, Utah to discuss an alternative and lightweight approach to software development and to develop the basic principles of Agile philosophy.
The leading developers issued a symbolic Manifesto for Agile software development that consisted of three main principles:
⇒ Individual and team interactions over processes and tools.
Software development is a human activity and the quality of interaction between people is vital. Tools are an important part of software development, but making great software depends much more on teamwork, regardless of the tools team may use.
⇒ Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Documentation can be a great resource for users and coworkers. However, the key goal of software development is to develop software that offers business benefits rather than extensive documentation.
⇒ Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Development teams work closely, communicate with the customers frequently. Only by listening to and getting feedback, teams will understand what stakeholders want.
⇒ Responding to change over following a plan.
Changes are a reality in software development, a reality that your software process should reflect. A project plan shall be flexible enough to change, as the different cases demand.
Following these Agile software development principles, developers use short, regular and controllable iterations of work called Sprints. In one short Sprint (2–4 weeks), a full development cycle is performed. It includes analysis, design, coding, testing and product release. Moreover, developers release a working software solution at the end of each Sprint. Finally, every next Sprint is an extension to the already working software solution that brings developers closer to a final version.
Since then, many agile frameworks have emerged such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming (XP). Many agile teams combine practices from a few different frameworks, spiced up with practices unique to the team. Agile methods are used in industries besides software.
AGILE ADVANTAGES
- The methodology decreases the risk of over-budgeting and spending extra money on eliminating bugs. Every project developed with Agile brings a potential budget reduction.
- An Agile-oriented development team creates a working version of the solution every 2–4 weeks. This way, developers are able to provide the final bug-free software solution to a client much faster.
- More projects are successful because a development plan can be changed in the middle of a sprint. The sooner both a customer and a developer understand the need for changes, the sooner they will be able to apply them.
- The best Agile advantage is an early Return On Investments (ROI). In short, a solution can be ready for commercial use after 2–3 Sprints.
Originally published at DevCom Blog. Other advantages as well as disadvantages are disclosed there. You will learn about Waterfall Methodology in comparison with the Agile methodology. The article also outlines the right moment when to use Agile Software development model for your business requirements.
