what is agile?

Over the past few years Agile development methods have enjoyed increasing popularity. Introduced at the turn of the century, Agile is not a single methodology. Rather, it is a set of values and principles developed by a group of industry experts who had experienced significant successes with development approaches that emphasized iterative development, customer collaboration, and technical excellence over documentation and prescriptive processes. The most popular Agile methodologies today are Scrum and Extreme Programming, but there are many other variants on the Agile theme: DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Lean Development, Feature-Driven Development and the Crystal methods.

Agile projects create working software in a series of short (2-4 week) iterations, working from a prioritized list of requirements (usually known as the Product Backlog). Priorities and selection of functionality are driven by business representatives. At the end of each iteration the development team demonstrates a working prototype of the product to the business representatives for acceptance. As the iterations proceed, new ideas may be added to the Product Backlog which may then be considered for delivery in future iterations.

It is clear that Agile is today hitting the mainstream. Agile is proving to be an approach that businesses can leverage to ensure they derive the best business value from their development projects. Agile practices allow teams to cope with a number of problematic project and organizational scenarios:

From a business perspective, Agile is able to accommodate situations in which business priorities are likely to change during the project; when you need to begin development when you have a rough idea what you want, but not all the details; or when you need to make sure that items of highest business value become available soonest. If the relationship between your development team and its business partners is already good, Agile approaches can further enhance, reinforce and maintain these relationships. On the other hand, if the relationship is problematic agile approaches can rebuild and strengthen those relationships by resolving difficulties in communication, and establishing joint commitment to the product under development.

From a development perspective, Agile enables you to release a sub-set of the system earlier than planned; develop your products as fast as possible and at a good level of quality; cope with new technologies that aren’t well understood yet.

Success in Agile development depends on creating the right mix of agile process and team culture, supported by the team’s ability to effectively apply a number of novel technical, business and management techniques. Businesses benefit from:

• Business value being delivered when it is needed
• Stronger relationships between development and its business partners
• Development projects that are innately driven by business priorities
• High quality systems that can be developed quickly
• High levels of visibility into project progress
• Heightened team morale and collaboration

For many businesses today the benefits of adopting an Agile development approach are highly valuable. To secure these benefits quickly can be difficult, but with SPC's agile services you can!

Want to know more?

• If you have a thorny business issue or Agile question you need answered fill out our on-line enquiry form.
• If you're unsure if your Agile Development approach is working for you as it should or could -- Take our quick 12-question needs assessment or read up on what you need to do to deliver on the Agile promise.
• If you're unsure if an Agile approach meets your needs, read up on the problems Agile can solve for you.
• To learn more, we encourage you to contact an SPC representative. They understand our services from your perspective. You will get an honest picture without the hype. There's no risk, no obligation, and plenty of ways to see if SPC is right for you.

Our goal is to ensure our clients have the right process, technology and skills to deliver lasting change to their development organization. Discover why SPC is right for you.

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