What is Agile, and what does it mean in Software Development?
Agile is the ability to create and respond to change. It is a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.
In software development language, Agile is a mindset, a way of approaching software development that promotes the continuous improvement of a particular product through different iterations.
In the Agile Manifesto, the Agile Alliance has also defined a set of 12 underlying principles:
1. The highest priority is customer satisfaction through valuable software's early and continuous delivery.
2. Welcome changing requirements, including late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.
4. Daily teamwork. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
5. Build projects around motivated individuals, offer the environment and support developers need, and trust them to get the job done.
6. A face-to-face conversation is an effective method of conveying information to and within a development team. 7. Working software is the primary measure of progress.
8. Sustainable development.
9. Agility is enhanced through technical excellence.
10. Maximizing the amount of work. Simplicity.
11. The best self-organizing teams will always offer the best architectures, requirements, and designs.
12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective.
Agile is a mindset, a set of values and principles. Agile is a way of thinking and action. Agile is about short cycles, iterative and incremental delivery, failing fast, getting feedback, delivering business value to customers early, and about people, collaboration, and interaction.
Agile methodologies are the most popular approach to project management used in software development.
Agile methodologies are the conventions a team can choose to follow in a way that follows Agile values and principles. An agile methodology is the group of conventions any team follows during development, guided by the twelve principles defined by the Agile Manifesto.
Agile, as explained above, is a mindset about transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Agile doesn't consist of any roles, events, or artifacts. It's a mindset. Scrum, for example, is one of the widely used frameworks that may greatly support becoming more Agile.
Scrum is a subset of Agile. It is a lightweight process framework for agile development and the most widely used one.
Scrum is a framework where people can address complex adaptive problems while productively and creatively delivering products of the highest possible value. In addition, scrum helps manage software projects and product or application development.
In Agile product development, a sprint is a period during which specific work is completed and ready for review, and each sprint begins with a planning meeting.
The sprint duration is determined by the scrum master, the team's facilitator, and the manager of the scrum framework. Once the team reaches a consensus on how many days a sprint should last, all future sprints should be the same. Traditionally, a sprint lasts 30 days.
After a sprint begins, the product owner must step back and let the team do their work. The project owner may attend these meetings during the sprint as an observer but is not allowed to participate unless it is to answer questions.
At the end of the sprint, the team presents its completed work to the project owner, and the project owner uses the criteria established at the sprint planning meeting to accept or reject the work.
During a sprint, there are several roles involved, and each working on different parts of the process:
Product Owner: This person represents the business or user community and is a liaison between the development team and customers. The product owner is in charge of working with the user group to define, prioritize and adjust what features will be in the product release.
Scrum Master: This person is the leading facilitator for the project's development team. They manage the process for how information is exchanged during the sprint, including leading stand-up meetings. Their main focuses are transparency, observation, and organization.
Scrum Team: The scrum team is responsible for executing the work. In addition to developers, the scrum team can contain testers, architects, designers, and IT operations.
Agile isn't just an excellent mindset for its ability to organize work. It's also a fantastic approach to access several benefits. Moreover, agile is so good that it benefits everyone involved in the software development process.
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