Agile Software Development

Introduction

Agile development is a powerful approach to software development that was adopted in the 1990s to improve the process. Agile improves many aspects of software development, including costs, scope, and schedule. The benefits of adopting Agile development include being adaptable to changes, foreseeable budget, predictable delivery, and transparency. Agile is flexible to any necessary changes to the product backlog unlike other waterfall models (Abdalhamid & Mishra 2017). Moreover, it allows for prior planning due to a predictable budget and schedule. The fixed schedule is divided into sprints, which further allows for an expected delivery period. Besides, the development allows for a clients’ involvement through every stage, thus, offering greater transparency in the process. Conversely, Agile development faces challenges such as resistance behavior and skills inadequacy (Budacu 2017). Accordingly, people are always resistant to change, therefore, adopting Agile development into organizations meets with a lot of resistance. Furthermore, people believe that Agile can only be used by coding experts which is a misconception, as a result, people skilled in other traditional systems resist leaving their “comfort zones” making the adoption of Agile insipid.

Agile Velocity

Agile Velocity is a measure that performs the prediction of the amount of work a team in Agile Development can complete within a set time limit. Velocity, therefore, enables the prediction of the time required to complete a given task. Thus, this planning tool gives credibility and transparency to the project since clients and other parties with a vested interest can follow the process without many hassles (Schwaber & Beedle 2002). Moreover, for clients tracking the progress, helps them to gain confidence, especially when there is a limitation on delivery time. The Agile Velocities calculated using the earlier work completion speed with similar properties (Budacu 2017). Agile Velocity is used in predicting the time required to complete a project in Agile Development. For instance, if a team has previously completed 5 stories in a Fortnight sprint game and each story is awarded 2 points, then the team has a velocity of 10 story points per sprint. Therefore, if a project requires 50 story points and the team averages 10 story points per sprint, it can be projected that they can complete the project within 5 sprints (10 weeks).

Agile Adoption

Agile software development has a significant impact on companies that adopt their practices. Accordingly, the impact includes software quality improvement, cost control, and the ability of stakeholders to follow the process (Abdalhamid & Mishra 2017). Agile significantly improves the quality of software developed in a shorter period. The significant improvement between the traditional methods and Agile Development is because the former prioritizes on the design while the latter concentrates on the product quality and transparency. Many companies adopt Agile citing its cost reduction nature in software development (Martin 2002). Cost reduction enables these companies to make more profits hence more growth. Additionally, Agile enables all stakeholders to follow the development process, thus raising their confidence. As a result, clients are satisfied with the ability to follow the progress in the Agile environment.

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Renowned companies that use Agile Development include CISCO, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T, among many others. These world-leading companies use Agile due to its dynamic and reliable nature (Budacu 2017). Despite having adopted other traditional methods in the past, these companies are always seeking better ways to adapt to the markets changing needs and trends. The adoption of Agile has enabled the efficient development of software in the organizational structure. Accordingly, the software aims at the current challenge not considering forthcoming problems. As a result, the consideration of future challenges makes the software- development process slow and ineffective in catering to the immediate concerns that surface. Agile has revolutionized solutions for organizations, hence growing innovation to higher levels since its popularity increased in the 2000s.

Current Trends

Current trends and usages of Agile adoption in software development include Value Stream Management (VSM), alignment between Agile and DevOps, Scrum and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) popularity. VSM is an upcoming technique that connects the core business to the relevant software. The synchronization of these two software development environments raises the accuracy and efficiency of software development. VSM aids the smooth operation between Agile and DevOps (Budacu 2017). Agile and DevOps are complementary tools that enable efficient software development and are now often used in collaboration by various companies (Abdalhamid & Mishra 2017). The Scrum implementation method remains the most popular among other methodologies and is expected to continue dominating. Scrum has given developers an easy platform to test their software during an implementation which also allows them to release beta versions of the programs. Thus, releasing the beta version of the software enables the users to sample and critic the program which helps the developers improve any shortfalls that might surface (Beck et al. 2001). Therefore, SAFe remains the leading scaling method for many users who expect to continue dominating the market.

References

Abdalhamid, S., & Mishra, A. (2017). Adopting of Agile methods in Software Development Organizations: Systematic Mapping. TEM Journal, 6 (4), 817.

Beck, K., Beedle, M., Van Bennekum, A., Cockburn, A., Cunningham, W., Fowler, M.,... & Kern, J. (2001). Manifesto for agile software development.

Budacu, E. N. (2017). Development of Agile Practices in Romanian Software Community. Informatica Economica, 21 (2).