Agile Foundations
By: Ed Vogel
Oct 2018
The Agile Manifesto was created in 2001 by a group of software developers attempting to find a better way to develop software from the standard paradigms at the time. This was a repsonse to the large numbers of failed projects due to monolithic project management practices.
Agile Manifesto
- Individuals and processes over tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Above all, Agile relies on communication. Communication among the team, communication with stakeholders and constant feedback to drive work in the correct direction to fullfill customer satisfaction.
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
We follow these principles: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.
- Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
- At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Agile provides constant feedback from the customers / users. That is a tremendous leap forward in software development. For years requirements were elicited from the client prior to development(planning phase) and developers would not interact with the client until project completion. On projects that last many months, if not years that leaves a huge gap where things can really go off track. We can all agree that changes found earlier are cheaper to correct than ones found later in the project. By involving the clients from the beginning and having regular checkins during the development process we allow for changes to be managed if a far more effective way. Validation Á verification - did we build what was asked of us and more importantly did we build what the client wanted. These two paths can severely diverge with out regular client feedback. Agile, especially Scrum, provides regular client feedback so our projects can change direction as soon as changed are identified. Hence, Agile.
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