Agile software development is a methodology that values flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. It is based on the agile manifesto, set of principles for software development that prioritize individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change.
Agile software development is an iterative and incremental approach to software development that emphasizes the importance of delivering a working product quickly and frequently. It involves close collaboration between the development team and the customer to ensure that the product meets their needs and expectations.
Also Known As
You’ll hear people call it a few things, but it all means the same flexible approach:
- Agile Software Development
- The Agil Methodology
- Agile
- “Scrum” or “Kanban Wrokflow”
Expected Benefits
When you nail Agile, you get some awesome perks:
- Faster Delivery of Value: Value is delivered faster, you don’t wait a year for the whole thing. You deliver valuable features early and often, enabling businesses to see returns more quickly and users to get value.
- Improved Flexibility (The “It’s Okay to Change Your Mind” Card): Flexibility is key! If you have a brilliant new idea or a significant shift in the market, it’s okay to change your mind. Agile welcomes changes, even late in the game. Unlike Waterfall where a change is catastrophic, you can easily reprioritize the next sprint.
- Strong Customer Involvement: Strong Customer Involvement: Customers Are Not Left in the Dark They frequently see the product, provide input, and help steer the ship. This ensures you build the right thing.
- Higher-Quality Software:Because you are continually testing and fixing smaller parts, you catch broken code sooner which means they are easier to fix.
- Better Team Collaboration and Morale: Teams are empowered to self-manage and communicate openly. When people feel ownership and their voice is heard, they’re happier and more productive.
- Reduced Project Risk: Briefly Reassess the status of a project regularly and track the progress. When you realize that something is not working, catch the major risk and peg risk to save yourself.
Common Pitfalls
Agile isn’t magic; it comes with its own challenges if you don’t use it wisely:
- Misunderstanding “Agile” as “No Planning”: The biggest misperception regarding agile is “it means no planning!” Flexibility doesn’t mean chaos. When using agile one needs a lot more disciplined planning, constant prioritizing and detailed estimation for those short sprints.
- Rigidly Following a Framework (The “Agile Zombie”): Don’t follow the rules (like the Daily Standup meeting) just because a book said so (the Agile Zombie). Utilize the framework (Scrum, Kanban, etc.) to meet the needs of your team and not vice versa.
- Lack of Cross-Functional Skills:People have been trained and are tapping multiple other skills which hampers the delivery process. If you are always waiting on an external specialist, your sprints will stall.
- Insufficient Stakeholder Engagement: Unavailability of the Customer/stakeholder: If the customer/stakeholder disappears and does not turn up for the review meetings to give feedback, it all breaks down. Collaboration is the engine!
- Poor Backlog Management: Lack of regular grooming of the Product Backlog (master to-do list) for cleaning and ordering. If it’s a giant, confusing mess, then the team won’t know what to build next.
- Scaling Challenges: Difficulty of getting 50 teams in a large-sized company to put into action Agile without disciplined scaling frameworks such as SAFe and LeSS.
Origins
Agile was born out of pure frustration with the older, long-winded ways of building software, specifically the Waterfall model, which required finishing step A (planning) completely before starting step B (building).
- 1990s: Developers started experimenting with “lighter” methods likes Scrum and XP when they got tired of endless projects.
- 2001: The “Agile Manifesto” was published
Today, Agile is dominant everywhere and has influenced everything from how we manage projects to how we release code.
