Critical Review On Agile Methods By Hayes And Andrews

Agile Methodologies are people-oriented more than process-oriented. Agile Methods assert that no process will ever make up the skill of the development team, so the role of a process is to support the development team in their work. Additionally, thanks to its flexibility and team-oriented, agile methodologies is well suited to the ever-changing business environment.

Agile methodology is an approach to project management and agile software methodology is not a one methodology but a set of methodologies which share common characteristics to achieve business goals. Before 1950’s project management have taken place in an informal way for many eras and after an ameliorating of formal project management methodologies began to be defined and swiftly spared through the industry rather than traditional methodologies. The traditional approach of project management identified a set of sequences of steps to be completed such as initiation, planning and design, execution and construction, monitoring and controlling and completion but not all projects will have every stage and some projects can be terminated before they reach completion. When it derived to IT industry in the past few years there’s been

As mention above feedback should be taken on the work to meet the needs of the stakeholders.

XP is one of the agile methods which is defined as Extreme Programming, many new developers and designers are tending to follow these methodologies than the age old techniques. But managers who are accustomed to the traditional way of software development are finding it difficult in accepting these new approaches. Furthermore the plan-driven approach also has many underlying advantages such as focusing on the major goals of the project which is named as “major milestone” on the contrary to “micro milestones or inch pebbles”. In the plan-driven approach more planning is emphasized which pressurize the development teams to follow the pre specified documentation even at the minor levels of modification at technology, commercial and personal aspects. The author of the article suggests that there should be at least three milestones in the software development process. Firstly for the progress of the project in order to know the current status of the project. Secondly for the stakeholder’s checkpoint i.e. to check the progress on the development process form the stakeholders point of view whether the commitment given to them is fulfilled or not. The planning spectrum demonstrates the models on straight line where the unplanned hacking is on the left of the spectrum and the inch pebble in on the extreme right.

Although, the agile development methodology use is becoming more and more prevalent in the tech industry, non-initiates often wonder if this “methodology” is nothing more than colorful lip-speak, used more to impress potential clients than deliver any true value. So what is the 411?

Extreme programming is a type of agile software development. It’s a software methodology with an intension of improving the quality of software and improving the responsiveness to changing needs of customers.

The purpose of this report is to define and discuss the use of agile methodologies. Agile is becoming a more popular term within the information technology industry and this report will help those unfamiliar with its techniques understand how agile works. The goal is also to inform the readers why agile can be preferred over traditional methods. While reading this report, it is recommended to keep in mind that agile is an alternative to using the traditional systems development lifecycle method.

Extreme Programming is one of the popular agile processes (Wells) and is about social changes (Beck and Andres). XP has been proven as one of the successful customer satisfactions since it delivers potential software that can be used, as the customer needs it. It continues to empower developers as it focus on developing excellent programing techniques and communication (Beck and Andres). Extreme programming includes collaborative teams in order to accomplish and solve problems as efficient as possible (Wells). Extreme programming hav five essential ways to improve software projects such: communication skills, simplicity, require feedback, respect and courage (Wells). An XP programmer requires maintaining communication with customers and colleague, and sustaining their design simple and clean (Wells). Programmers are to get feedback by testing the software, and delivering end system product to the customers as early s possible (Wells). Lastly, programmers respect their colleagues as they, together, courageously respond to the changing and evolving technology (Wells).

Yet another method is extreme programming (XP). It is also a software development method which improves software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirement (extreme). This program has proved very successful at many companies. It is successful because it focuses on customer satisfaction. Extreme programming emphasizes teamwork. In this program, managers, customers and developers are all equal partners in a team. Extreme programing improves a software project in different ways which are communication, simplicity, feedback, respect and courage. In this method, programmers constantly communicate with their customers. They keep their design simple and clean. They get feedback by testing their software and deliver the system to the customer as soon as possible and implement changes as suggested. Every team member involvement is essential for the success of the program. With this foundation extreme programmers are able to courageously respond to changing requirement and technology (Extreme Programming).

Over the last 13 years, since the publication of Agile Manifesto, Agile has become very popular and there has been a steady rise in the adoption of agile development methodologies resulting into an increased volume of successful projects and highly motivated and self-organized IT development teams.

Key principles described by Extreme Programming (XP) are communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and quality work (Beck 2000). Extreme programming practices can be followed only when team size is small. This is not suitable process for distributed teams. Project length is general short which is around 2 weeks.

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

One of the three pillars of Scrum is Transparency - it requires significant aspects of the Scrum process to be visible to those responsible for the outcome. As such one of the most important information radiators when following the Scrum Framework is the Scrum Board. But why use a Scrum Board, what benefit will it add for my team? And what about setting one up, they are so many different ways or organising your Scrum Board, which one will work for my team? Hopefully, this article on the non-functional aspect of delivering change will aide you in achieving this goal. But first;

Now agile methodologies—which involve new values, principles, practices, and benefits and are a radical alternative to command-and-control-style management—are spreading across a broad range of industries and functions and even into the C-suite. National Public Radio employs agile methods to create new programming. John Deere uses them to develop new machines, and Saab to produce new fighter jets. Intronis, a leader in cloud backup services, uses them in marketing. C.H. Robinson, a global third-party logistics provider, applies them in human resources. Mission Bell Winery uses them for everything from wine production to warehousing to running its senior leadership group. And GE relies on them to speed a much-publicized transition from 20th-century

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.