The Benefits and Challenges of Agile Methodology

Agile Development is one of the methodologies use in software engineering to help develops software. Today, there are a lot of different approach to Agile method. However, they all share the same value and principals. This method is value interactions over team and customer, workable software, and adaptable to change. Over the processes, documentation, contract, and plan. Agile developer also following 12 principle. 1, Their first priority is to delivery fast and quality software that will satisfy customer. 2, be adaptable to any change in requirement at any point in time, Agile development always

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.

“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.

OVERVIEW: Hy-Vee Corporate headquarters is based in West Des Moines and is an employee-owned supermarket. As of 2015, Hy-Vee has 233 stores across eight Midwestern states and $6.9B in annual revenue.

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 initial steps in researching a problem is to know exactly what the problem is and compose a problem statement that unambiguously identifies and defines the problem to research. Sekaran (2003) said, “No amount of good research can find solutions to the situation, if the critical issue or the problem to be studied is not clearly pinpointed” (p. 69). The area of research for this paper focuses on software development, in particular, the study of agile software development methodologies and if these methodologies are successful in delivering software on time, within budget, and includes the requested features.

In the world of Computer Science, Information Technology, and Software development, people always work together to get tasks done. Whether you get someone from the Business side, the programming side, the Cyber Security side, or even HR, these people all work together sometimes to work on a task and finish the task. Agile is one of the most prominent method of using and as well as building a design for a client’s needs. But to make it a little more complicated, there a few different subsets within Agile – Scrum and Waterfall.

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].

The top reason for adopting an Agile software application development approach is that it promotes a culture of collaboration and continuous feedback that concentrates on early delivery of superior products that meet important end user requirements. Agile software development is in use by many organizations and has been accepted not only as a method of developing software but in project management as well. This business case will outline the justification for Company “X” to move towards using the Agile development method and help guide management to evaluate and consider this option. An article related to the Agile method of software development was perused in preparation for this business case. The article examined is titled “Agility in Context” [1] (Hoda et al, 2010). This article along with my prior employment experience with Company “X” has helped provide the context for this business case.

[1]The Agile software development (ASD) methodologies have been established in various streams like academic, educational and also in professional software development. Understanding of how ASD methodologies are used, the kind of acceptance, successes and failures they have in the mentioned streams would be the main exploration. The findings from the web-based survey of Microsoft employees who involved in development, testing and management have indicated that around one-third of the people use ASD and the SCRUM is the most popular ASD methodology. [2]Agile methods can be mainly used in environments which are unpredictable and helps in succeeding over such environments which are in the reality today.

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.

This report is to discuss about the SCRUM (also known as Iterative Development Model), one of the famous software development methodology besides the Waterfall method.

Agile Software Development is a set of principles that have revolutionized the software development industry. They "seek alternatives to traditional project management" acting as "an alternative to waterfall, or traditional sequential development." (The Agile Movement, agilemethodology.org) It is thought that Agile came to be with the introduction of the Agile Manifesto, but their origination dates back much further.