The Is An Active Practitioner Into Agile Or Not

This paper will take a in depth look at what makes AGILE “AGILE”, including the history, uses, and arguments for and against its use.

Agile development and project management has its roots in the Information Technology world. A large portion of the information that follows in the next two chapters refers to IT related development and projects. That being said, Agile is not limited to IT and in fact the model is expanding well beyond strictly IT.

Agile methods, unlike ISDs, bring constant iterations, constant user involvement, and frequent releases and close communication. Clutterbuck emphasizes how a case study of one small SME shows the success gained when it moved away from ISD towards agile management. Overall, agile management anticipates risks, reacts aggressively to new challenges or encrustations, and allows all parties and decision makers to draw closer together. The only challenge, Clutterbuck (2009) argues, is that agile management does come into conflict with the need to formalize contractual obligations between the customer and the developer or producer of the product (Clutterbuck, 2009).

The organization understood the agile methodology would help reduce development costs and reduce burnout because the team would not be putting in long hours for long periods of time to work the project. Additionally, the developers could be working to develop software at the same time the business requirements were being gathered and reviewed. One process that the team was working on did not impede the progress that another area of the team was working on. The agile methodology empowered our team to continuously plan and re-plan throughout the entire development processes.

To date, there are a huge number of papers where are explained the advantages of Agile approach for IT area, namely

I think the reason why Agile Software Development has been gradually accepted in recent years is that the initiator presents in Manifesto for Agile Software Development. The author indicated what he believed in and the purpose of our core values. Three core principles form the agile project management, which is why team exist, what products we want to create, and how to work together. If we want to create outstanding products, we need people who are professional; If we want to attract and retain good staff, we need to have a qualified organization. (Beck, Beedle & Van Bennekum,

During this research on agile development methodology, we have taken various Research papers, Magazines, online Journals and news articles into consideration. This research helped us to comprehend that all agile methods follow the four values and 12 principles of the Agile Manifesto. This paper explores the challenges open in agile systems development while adopting it in an organization. Additionally, we also analyzed the solutions to these challenges.

Agile movement gives alternatives to the normal way of project management. The Agile way is usually used in software development to assist businesses to react to the unpredictability.

The way that software is developed has been rapidly evolving over time, going through many iterations, one genre of which is Agile software development. The Agile Manifesto1 was published in 2001, however the ideas behind it have existed and used since the early 1970’s when E. A. Edmonds published a paper that introduced the idea of an adaptive software development process2. Then in the 1990’s there was a rapid evolution of software development processes. This lead to the creation of scrum in 1995, extreme programming in 1996 and feature-driven development in 1997. Though they were devised before the Agile Manifesto was created, they now all fall under Agile software development. Agile software development methods are generally considered much better than previous methods, such as the Waterfall method, though it is still considered to be in its early stages with many issues3.

For examples the programmers write the code and the quality assurance test, and that is their only job. In Agile, because the team delivers working product, the lines between what team members do get blurred. (Rasmussen 27) Team members will have to take on more responsibilities and may cross into other members’ areas of expertise to help get the product working during each iteration. In Agile there are not as many roles and less of a hierarchy; this is so the team members can check their ego at the door and work together to complete the project. To do this the Agile manager needs to find individuals who are highly motivated and take pride in their project. He must also empower and trust his team so they can make decisions as the iteration progresses toward the finish. Once empowered, the team must be accountable for the work they put into the project. (Rasmussen 27) Working with Agile makes it easy for team members to remain accountable for the work they put into the project. Working with Agile makes it easy for team members to remain accountable because of working software being shown repeatedly. Software that does not work shows that the team has failed. Close communication among all members of the team so everyone is working toward the same goal is essential. This is much easier if the team is located in one place and can work through problems face-to-face. Since many companies have gone global, there are many different kinds of software and

This method utilizes smaller cross functional groups of people that work together on complex issues in a creative self-organized team environment. These teams should be comprised of all the right people needed to complete assignments and can include business analysts, developers, testers and the end users. Collaboration, teamwork and change are embraced rather than focusing on processes, extensive documentation and sticking to a precise plan. Incremental phases under agile allow for changes and product releases are delivered after each iteration. The most common agile method is scrum, in which a relatively small group of dedicated resources are solely responsible for every aspect of the work and are self-sufficient. Additional popular agile methods include rapid application development, lean software development, Kanban, extreme programming and scrumban. In the agile manifesto, developed in 2001, some of the key principles are to deliver frequent improvements that add value, to welcome change that adds competitive advantage, to continually work together through motivated individuals and focus on simplicity and maximizing the amount of work not done.

Impact of agile software development approach on industry Comparison of different agile methods and their applicability

Agility means the ability to move quickly and easily. “Agile” is a collective term for methodologies and practices that evolved in recent years to increase the relevance, quality, flexibility and business value of software solutions. These adaptive management approaches are specifically intended to address the problems that have historically plagued software development and service delivery activities in the IT industry – including budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-quality outputs, and dissatisfied users. It is an iterative approach to software development that builds software incrementally from the start of the project, unlike waterfall approach of trying to deliver it all at once near the end. It works by breaking projects down into little bits of user functionality called user stories prioritizing them, and then continuously delivering them in short cycles called iterations. It promotes adaptive planning, progressive development, early delivery, continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. The concept of agile working has been adopted by many organizations, which have realized that lengthy decision-making processes are no longer fit for purpose in a world of complex and continuous change. Agile development provides opportunities to assess the direction throughout the development lifecycle. The paradigm shift and failure of waterfall model in large size projects, led to the evolution of new evolutionary methods including agile software

The agile lifecycle based on experiment operation, which cause the good performance. The visibility indicates to support the product development. This provides efficient vision for key users. Risk management, a short incremental releases are visual to the product holder and product team through its development which help us to select any problems early and make it easier to reply to alteration. Agility indicates to admit the alterations, client satisfaction, creating the suitable product [6, 8]. There are agile methodologies: feature driven development, Extreme programming, rational unified process, animated systems development, scrum and Adaptive software development [9].

Despite the fact that agile process has many advantages, Software Organizations still using traditional process and not jumping into agile. We have summarized the characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses and issues of the conventional and agile methods in below Table1.