A Report On Agile Methodology

IT projects are influenced by various factors that ultimately cause a project to either reach successful completion or face heavy challenges. Planning is one of the key factors among these. Good planning comprises of determining project objectives, documenting those objectives, allocation of clear responsibility and accountability of various tasks, creating schedule by taking into account scope and budget specifications and continuous revision to the plan based on evaluation. Additionally, maintaining control over schedule, scope and budget, is another factor that plays an important role. Certain factors like organizational changes, technological changes etc also have a big impact on IT projects.

Agile processes do not devote much time up front to formal system specifications, but rather relies on continuous communication with the customer throughout the development process. The process accounts for the fact that needs often change or cannot be fully developed early on and is flexible to this. (+)

Introduction to Agile Methods by Hayes and Andrews gives detailed-oriented information about different aspects of agile methods like why there is a need for new software development processes and pitfalls of traditionally methodologies and how this lead to emergence of agile methods. They describe various existing agile methods but describes only one in great detailed – Extreme Programming(XP). They define Extreme Programming as agile, adaptive software methodology having well defined values - Communication, Simplicity, Feedback, and Courage. Failing in achieving this values will result in failing Extreme Programming. Extreme Programming is used only when you have complete understanding of the business and requirements. Extreme Programming follow a series of iteration to deliver the final project. Initially the story heard from the customer is broken down into smaller stories such that the developers can assign time to develop that stories and then its deliver to the customers for feedback. Coach plays a vital role in Extreme Programming. Afterwards Hayes and Andrews describe how XP differs from traditional methodologies. They also explain the common misconception about Extreme Programming is spread around the world. There are only fewer companies in the world that uses Extreme Programming because people are afraid of changing to new methods.

The Agile Methodology Principles makes the development much faster because the primary importance is given to the customer satisfaction and continuously delivers product. Even though requirements change at the ending phase the product is developed. The Agile development insist the self-organizing team which can create requirements, best architectures, best models. The Agile development promotes a distinct way of thinking to build things and methods to deliver continuous improvement of product. It facilitates to make best practices and decisions together. It a development to promote the adaptive planning, continuous improvement, evolutionary development and delivery, and required time to complete work. It encourages for rapid response to change in the whole development cycle. The project team prefers agile development to move in a creative and quick way. The project progress also depends on working software and project environment and support is provided and built by the individuals. They promote the sustainable environment. Constant attention is provided to the technical excellence and best models are given by the agile methodology. This principle helps the project team members

First, let’s take a look at Agile, in particular the role of scope. Several traditional software development models came about in the 1960s, such as incremental, spiral and waterfall modelling. Over time it was realized that the software development team did not realize all of the needs up front. Thus, the customer was was not delivered what was expected. It’s essential to have an outline of who, what, when and where but this is often a transforming list.

“Agile” was first introduced in 2001, by a team of software engineers looking to improve their adaptiveness and responsiveness to ever-changing requirements. Not knowing where to begin, the team began by formulating principles, which they would use to guide their new development process. Which, in turn, lead to the creation of the Agile Manifesto, and thus a new methodology was born.

Agile techniques should be used to solve the current issues faced by the company as agile techniques normally being used by the software industry help the business to act in response under the unpredictable situations faced. In Agile methodologies opportunities are been provided to evaluate whether the project is under the direction all through its development cycle. All this is being accomplished with the help of regular tempo kept in work, and the teams must show a product which is having the desired potential.

Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework, with "just enough" ceremony, that produces high quality solutions, in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders [1].

What is Agile? What is Agile Project Management? Agile is “not a methodology. The Agile movement seeks alternatives to traditional project management. Agile approaches help teams respond to unpredictability through incremental, iterative work cadences and empirical feedback. Agilists propose alternatives to waterfall, or traditional sequential development” (Agile Methodology). Agile Project Management on the other hand is, “continuous improvement, scope flexibility, team input, and delivering essential quality projects” (Agile for Dummies).

Agile methodology for a typical software project or any in environment in which the requirements are unknown or change quickly. Agile focus toward teamwork, constant user feedback, continuous improvement, face-to-face meetings, constant cooperation, early and continuous delivery of working

By adopting Agile practices, the organization will pursue consistent, successful delivery of projects regardless of company department or project size.

Software development is one of the highest demands in all over the world. We use software development techniques to solve the problems and to satisfy customers. Agile software development is a conceptual framework for software; it is also a group of software development methods based on iterative development. In 2001, agile software development was created by seventeen people with a desire to find alternative approaches to software development. The most important thing about agile methods are team work, conveying information to the team, face to face conversation, and satisfy the customer. There are various methodologies but I am going to describe the most popular ones.

Agile Methodology is an incremental, repetitious means of managing projects, particularly in the field of software development. These iterations, or sprints, give project managers many opportunities to evaluate and change the project during its lifecycle as well as keeping the end user informed and involved in development.

Agile methodology is an alternative approach to traditional management, especially in software development. This method assists in responding to the unpredictability of developing software. It uses incremental, iterative work sequences that are generally known as sprints. This methodology is used to minimize risk by developing software in short time boxes. Figure (5) illustrating Agile methodology below.

Today’s world market is much faster. Every industry is now become the result orientated. They need results in quick time. Like any other industry IT industries also force to make the changes in concepts and techniques they were using traditionally. The traditional models like waterfall, Incremental model, RAID model are not useful for most of the current project requirement. Nowadays project requirements depend on many other unstable concepts, which make the project less predictable. Because of these entire unpredictable project, agile becomes the first choice of most of the clients. The agile software development methods are more adaptive approach, while conventional/traditional software development methods are predictive approach. In traditional method all the project development plan is created before starting the actual development. Once the designing is completed we can’t make changes. On the other hand an agile methodology has the provision to acquire such changes even after the coding is started. Agile relies more on the incremental, iterative development cycles. Agile methodology software is developed in the small periods. Agile is for the projects whose requirements are not fully discovered, projects where output is not predictable. This makes the agile methodology more suitable for the current market situation.