The last couple of years has shown a great many trends in technology, some of which prove to be beneficial for software development. As with most things, the key is to find a way of applying the right ones to your specific situation, and with that, agile software development should be a part of your agile development strategy.
But how can agile development become a part of your development strategy? In this article, I will try to show you how agile development may help you, by analyzing the reasons to use agile in the first place.
Agile Software Development in Brief
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Before we start looking into agile software development, it is important to understand what is it about. We often find so many different things when reading about it. As it turns out, agile software development is not some exotic practice but just the way of working that is adopted by all developers to do the following things:
- To provide better solutions and to shorten the time to market
- To improve the communication between the developers and the product owner
- To make the codebase more stable and manageable
All of these points are based on software development methodology. But they are just a few of the many reasons to use agile in software development today.
So, when it comes to software development today, we are living in an environment where there is a constant flow of updates and changes to the software. Every day, you may find at least one minor change and many, many more that are made in collaboration with your clients and testers. This is why agile is being used more and more by companies in order to make the process of creating software a more fluid one.
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Agile Software Development: Benefits
The benefits of Agile software development are that is creates a more efficient development cycle, where developers build, test and release their products on an agile schedule, based on the customer’s business needs. With Agile software development, more is achieved with less, and less is achieved with less.
Below are the key benefits:
1. Better Development Process
The agile development method allows developers to deliver quality products more quickly and effectively. This process is more flexible, and agile teams are enabled to work in a more cross functional way, with an increased focus on communication. This process also gives teams more power and control, allows them to work more efficiently and enables them to produce high quality code quickly.
2. Better Product
Agile software development makes for better products, because it puts product design before development, as well as customer feedback before development. Agile development also allows customer feedback to inform the development process, and this creates a continuous improvement cycle in the development and production process.
3. Better Quality
Agile development ensures quality in the products being delivered, as it enables the teams to develop and test their products from the outset. This approach puts an emphasis on user centric development, which ensures that teams deliver products that are fit for purpose, in a cost-effective manner.
4. Better Availability
Agile development provides the products that are being delivered at the right time. The continuous delivery process provides faster access to a broader set of users, and is also enables users to evaluate the features and functionality of the delivered products sooner.
It also gives teams the flexibility to work around the business cycle, rather than sticking to the traditional rigid product development process, which can lead to delays in development.
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5. Better Productivity
The agile development process encourages team members to spend their time focusing on their product. This leads to increased productivity as the teams are focused on the development process. It also enables the team to become self-sufficient, as they develop their own processes and strategies to reach their goals.
6. Better Business Continuity
Agile development enables the development of products that are resilient, as well as modular and scalable. It ensures that the business can adapt to changes that are introduced in the business environment, and at the same time, teams are able to adjust quickly to meet the changing requirements of the customer.
7. Better Process Management
Agile development enables developers to focus on the delivery of solutions, and this eliminates the need to spend time on the administrative tasks that might take up time and resources.
This frees up team members to be able to focus on quality and efficiency, rather than on the less valuable aspects of the development process. Agile development allows teams to focus on delivering high quality products and services, by focusing on what they are best at.
8. Better Engagement
Agile development enables employees to focus on solving problems, and not on delivering them, as well as focusing on customer satisfaction. It allows developers to take ownership of the development cycle, and therefore, improve their ability to engage and develop customer relationships, as they can identify their needs and the requirements that have to be met.
9. Better Planning
Agile development also enables project managers to focus on planning, as it enables them to focus on planning by focusing on scope, features and scope rather than processes, and this gives them an opportunity to become more creative and innovative, as they are not bound to rigid processes.
10. Better Product Development
Agile development is beneficial for organisations, as it allows them to focus on developing products that are in alignment with customer needs, which means that they will deliver better products. Agile development also makes it easy to integrate new members into the team, and the same goes for new skills that are required, so these can be provided by the right people, so the team remains productive, while growing their development capabilities.
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How Agile Software Development Works
To understand how the agile project works, we should first explain a few common steps of agile projects. But before we go into the details of how they work, let’s first see how agile projects may work.
Planning
The first step is the planning. It is not surprising that the process of planning an agile project is quite similar to that of any project, but in fact, it is even more important than for projects that are not agile.
If a project is not planned well, you will be able to plan a bad workflow and that will cause a lot of problems and delays, which means no benefit from adopting this methodology at all.
The next step is to create a project strategy. This is the most important part of the project planning process, and it is just as important in the development process as in other fields of life. You have to understand what will be your strategy in this project.
The main goal of this strategy is to give you the chance to develop the project in the best way possible. The best strategy is the one that is going to benefit you and your client at the end of the project, and not the one that is most popular among the developers.
If you understand your audience better and try to create a strategy that is based on their needs, you will benefit them greatly.
Implementation
Now that we have the strategy set, the next step is to implement it. For this purpose, you need to set a budget and plan on which tools you are going to use. What do you need to get and what do you need to keep? How will you keep the progress and the scope in check? Will you be using any additional tools?
There are many advantages in using agile methods in the implementation process of a project. One of the most important ones is the fact that you will have a much clearer view of what is going on in the project.
For example, if you are using continuous integration, you will be able to see at any given moment how far you have gotten in the development process and how much has been done. This will allow you to know whether your progress is going according to plan.
If you use unit tests and get your automated tests, you can know at any time how close you are to the goal. If you use continuous delivery, you will be able to see how fast the team is making changes and how quickly you will be able to deploy new features and fixes.
All of these things are very helpful for development and project planning, and you should always keep an eye on these things in the process of developing a project.
Now that you know how the implementation process should be, you can start working on it. Start with the strategy that you defined earlier. You have to start small and gradually build up. Start working on a little bit of everything, and try to be as transparent as possible.
Testing
So far, we have covered what should be done to plan and implement a project. Now it is time to test everything. In order to do that, you should have a test strategy in mind. This will help you to understand if the tools you use are working properly and if the process of development is going according to plan.
After you have a clear understanding of how your project is going to be developed, you need to start testing and getting the feedback from the clients. This is the most important thing in development. When will you get feedback from clients, what are they asking for, and what do you want to improve? This is when you should start testing.
Release
When all the tests are done, it is time to deploy the software. This is when you should release it. If you are using continuous delivery, you should release your code as often as possible.
There is no hard and fast rule, but if you are releasing your code more frequently, you will be able to improve the process of development and your client will be able to find the bugs as soon as possible.
When a product is ready to be released, the main thing that the product owner or a client wants is the feedback. As we have seen, the client is going to keep asking questions and give feedback about the project. If you cannot give them answers, they may not want to continue using your product. Make sure to give them answers.
If your project is not going as expected, give them answers as soon as possible and fix the issues. If there are too many bugs, you may need to update the project and even start from scratch.
So, you see, agile has become a common part of software development today.
Why Businesses Need Agile Software Development?
Software development cycles have gotten shorter and shorter. The rise of agile methods and software engineering approaches like Extreme Programming and Continuous Delivery have driven many of the changes.
However, the reason that cycles have shortened is more than just a focus on short cycles. Agile methods help business teams focus on solving business problems. Agile methods often focus on the software development itself, rather than the technical implementation of the product or project.
As time goes on, more and more people are embracing agile methods and using them to shorten their software development cycles. While this certainly means that everyone wins, in some cases, companies have experienced negative effects from shortening their development cycles.
These negative effects often come down to the fact that the agile approach requires a greater emphasis on communication and collaboration. And this can be difficult for some companies to embrace. The challenge for some companies is that their current processes may not be suited to adopting agile development practices. In such cases, companies need to be deliberate about which practices will work for them.
Conclusion: Why Agile is Important Today
As we already said, the reason agile software development is so important today is that its applications are constantly expanding. There are many benefits to implementing this methodology, which is why we have chosen it.
Agile enables the fast delivery of high-quality software. The software is continuously developing and changing. So, you have the opportunity to fix the errors and bugs in your project quickly. You will also be able to see what the product is going to look like before it is finalized.
A clear project plan is also essential for any agile project. If a project does not have clear goals, how can a team achieve them? If you have a list of tasks, how will you accomplish them? For this reason, agile has become such a popular choice today for developing the projects in the software world.
