WHAT IS AGILE? HOW TO GET MORE VALUE OUT OF IT?

Agile is a software development model, it refers to a group of software methodologies based on iterative development process. In this practice, requirements and solutions will be discussed by self-organized teams. Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management that encourages frequent adaptions towards tentative modifications. Agile methodology was brought from a set of engineering best practices that are intended to deliver high quality software products.

It shows agility in teams with respective to self-organization and teamwork. Outcome from agile teams will directly connect with business needs and company goals. Many industry leaders started agile practices, Suneratech is one of them. Any development practices that is in line with agile development will follow the concepts of Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto was developed by a group of people from leading software industry.

Agile Manifesto for Software Development:

In 1990, software development followed other development models which took enormous time between business requirements gathering and delivering software -- it lead to many problems. There were instances, where projects have been cancelled. Those existing development models were not ready to speed up for industry needs, so some leaders from IT industry took initiation and developed some principles and values. These values added in Manifesto, it has the capability to address Software industry problems.

Four Values of the Agile Manifesto:

Agile Manifesto includes four values and principles which lead to a faster software development. These four values are applied to each Agile methodology where all of them guide to -- quality software development, software product and the best working software.

1.     First value in the Manifesto talks more about Individuals and interaction than the traditional processes and tools. People are prioritized over tools, because people are the one who directly understand the business requirements. Self-organization and motivation are other important factors here.

2.     Agile emphasis more on Customer Collaboration than contract negotiation. In software development, requirements cannot be collected in one shot, therefore manifesto talks about collaboration with clients, a crucial thing to look. As per the Agile Manifesto, a customer is engaged and collaborated throughout software development process. This makes very easy for development to meet customer needs.

3.     Agile has less concentration on comprehensive documentation than working with software. Spending more amount of time in different sets of documents and their approvals will consume lots of time, due to this factor development for actual software lags a lot. Working with software makes sense than simply presenting documents with business clients.

4.     Ready to accept intermittent changes than following a static plan. In traditional development, change is expensive. To avoid this, agile delivery is introduced, where each sprint is very minimal and changes can be taken at any point of time. Agile development focuses on continuous development and quickly responds to business requirement.