Agile might give the impression based on your abilities in a sports ground or a yoga studio, but we are talking about agile as a software development methodology. If you have an idea of how “agile as a software development methodology” works, then great, but if you don’t then you would have to start with the basics. It needs to be understood that agile can be applied to anything you can think of. You can use agile practices to improve your tasks, optimize workplace efficiency or align agile software development teams. 

The concept behind the approach is:

“Agile creates a continuous improvement mindset that values flexibility, adaptability, collaboration, and efficiency.”

In this article, we will cover the basics as well as agile software development in detail and some of the benefits of opting for agile methodology.

The Concept of Agile in Software Development

The concept of agile has really taken over the software development industry. Agile software development is similar to the trait the word describes, which is adaptability, flexibility, and desirability. The world of enterprises serves humans and it demands it to have human-like characteristics. Businesses have evolved and rigidity has no place in the enterprise structure of today and the same applies to software development. 

Agile software development is about case-specific processes and follows the following activities:

• Engineering
• Debugging
• Deployment
• Maintenance
• Testing
• Design etc

These might look similar to other software development practices and you may think how this is different from the other approaches. It differs in the way these conceptions and solutions evolve, have a look:

• Flexibility
• Responsive to change
• Breaking down of projects to smaller scales
• Collaboration and synergy with other teams and clients
• Prioritization and responsiveness 
• Frequent delivery and progress measurement
• Transparency

Difference Between Traditional and Agile Software Development

Agile software development opposes the traditional “waterfall” software development approach. In the traditional approach, the project gets released at the end of the project cycle, whereas in an agile software development model, the daily progress on the project gets delivered to you through brief sessions and through official communication channels. Agile software development is feature-driven, gives developers autonomy, and believes in outcomes.

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The agile software development approach is quick to deal with situational problems and has the inherent ability to cope with situational changes as their approach is adaptive. The whole team enjoys the freedom to put in their views regarding a situation as compared to the traditional model that follows roles and specific people can do specific work. 

Agile is non-linear and focuses on flexibility, collaboration between team members, and making sure they deliver consistently to the stakeholders. It believes in evolving, continuous communication as to what’s working and what has to be changed, and what needs to change. It’s the new and multidimensional way of working that gets past the bottlenecks embedded in the traditional project management approach. 

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12 Core Principles of Agile

• Customer satisfaction through continuous and early delivery of software 
• Adoption changes, even in later stages of development
• Delivery of working software between a couple of weeks to a couple of months with working towards reducing timescales
• Collaboration between businesses and developers daily throughout the project
• Provision of supporting environment for motivated individuals
• In-person meetings, as they are most effective
• Working software is the primary measure of progress
• Agile believes and promotes sustainable development. The users, developers, and clients should all work to maintain and sustain it
• Continuous introduction of new technologies and enhanced designs improve agility
• Simplicity is essential to this approach
• Team reflection that leads to important changes to enhance performance
• Teams that are self-organizing come up with the best designs

Benefits of agile

There are countless benefits to agile practices for software development as well as other industries. The general philosophy of agile can be applied to all sorts of situations and it is because of the versatility that it will evolve with the team. 

Following are some of the benefits of agile practices when applied to software development or any business for that matter.

• Achieve optimal efficiency by eliminating waste
• Make decisions effectively
• Easy adaptation and adjustment to new information
• Be consistent with stakeholders deliverables deadlines
• Adding value for customers and stakeholders
• Try understanding the customer journey
• Build superior products of high quality
• Maintain capacity to make sure no one is  under or overworked
• Identify roadblocks before they occur
• Collaboration between team members and stakeholders
• Cultural, technological, and economic changes adaptability
• Expect the unexpected
• Tailored processes according to your requirements
• Build an encouraging and cohesive structure
• Development of a mindset that looks for a room for improvement

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Popular agile methodologies used in software development

Now you will be quite familiar with agile practices and basics to understand some of the most popular agile methodologies.

Scrum

Scrum is one of the most popular in agile software development and is fairly a complicated process for those who aren’t familiar with it, but it basically revolves around a set of sprints that focus on completing a set amount of work. It’s somewhat similar to Trello in how it operates and helps in smooth coordination and tracks the progress in real-time. 

Kanban

It is a simple process, as compared to the more complicated Scrum, and is often partially utilized with other agile models as Scrum. It is a task management tool to achieve to optimize efficiency. Kanban visually organizes workflow on boards and tasks move smoothly, recording the changes and adjustments that are made along the way.

In simplest terms, the board consists of three columns, which have the To-do, doing, and done groups that allow work to move easily to the next phase. Trello is an example of an ongoing Kanban board. 

Lean

Lean follows the 5 lean principles, created by Toyota, which help teamwork more productively, efficiently, and effectively. It can be applied to various software development methodologies.

 If you have any queries, how agile processes work at InvoZone, and how agile software development can benefit your product development, get in touch with us at ARFASOFTECH.

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