Why Go Agile Method of Development

Why Go Agile? Understanding the Benefits of the Agile Method of Development

The emergence of the “Agile” development method lays in the real-life project experiences of professionals working in the IT field, specifically with the challenges and shortcomings of the more traditional “Waterfall” method. With this approach, development teams have found a way to nullify the negative aspects of traditional development's rigidity and lengthy, expensive timelines.

A comparison of traditional "Waterfall" development method, versus the "Agile" technique.

What is the Agile Approach?

Agile is a lean and effective model for the successful development of various technical solutions including: websites, web applications, software, and mobile applications. Agile methodologies are many, but most common include the following steps. 

Discovery / Analysis

Before beginning development, it is essential to understand the client’s background, business goals, and product vision. Agile projects comprise a series of initial discovery sessions and research to attain a deep understanding of the client's goals, challenges, business climate, customers, and users. These sessions include key development team members (project managers, developers, and designers) and the client to gain a uniform and shared understanding of the project scope and outcomes. 

Planning / Prioritizing

After the discovery sessions, the client and development team works together to build a high-level product backlog. This backlog includes a prioritized wish list of features that will be useful to the client and their users. The priority will determine the order in which the features are elaborated, developed, tested, and delivered. Consequently, the team builds a development timeline centered on delivering the highest value features before moving on to lower-value ones.

Designing

Once the client’s vision is thoroughly grasped, the design team begins imagining the finished product. Some design phases include the creation of wireframes, technical specifications, and visual designs, which are approved by the client and development team over many iterations. 

Building

After design and technical requirements are finalized, developers build the product in its determined format. Using the prioritized feature list in the planning stage, developers add functionality in short development “sprints,” allowing the client to test each feature as they are completed and while development continues.

Testing

Product testing and quality assurance continuously takes place to detect and resolve defects. It’s also possible to test working software in a demo environment with real users. Feedback is immediately incorporated to improve the product. These cycles of iterations continues till the whole product is delivered and can even continue after the product launches to the public.

Advantages of Agile Development

Client-Developer Collaboration

enables team to truly understand the client’s vision

The stakeholders also gather enough faith on the gain on the team’s ability to deliver high-quality working software as they can see tangible results. Thus a firm-client-customer relationship can be built, which can encourage successful development and future profitable business. 

User Satisfaction

A 1995 study of over $37 billion USD worth of U.S. Defense Department projects inferred that 46% of the software did not meet the real needs and another 20% required rework to be usable. 

Agile’s continuously evolving planning, execution and feedback loop enables the team to align the software with desired business needs. The final product that comes out of the Agile methodology, better addresses the business and customer needs. 

Development Gets Done

Agile’s method of breaking development into small, feature-focused iterations makes it less cumbersome and overwhelming, allowing for more “quick wins.” 

According to the Standish Group's famous CHAOS Report of 2000, 25% of all projects simply fail through subsequent cancellation, with no useful software developed. A study in the UK showed that of 1,027 projects using Agile, 87% were completed.

Fast and Cost-Effective

According a to survey result, Agile software development practices delivered in up to 50% less time with a higher degree of client and customer satisfaction. 

Development sprints allow the features to be delivered quickly and frequently, with a high level of predictability. The cost of each can be easily predicted as they are calculated through the amount of work that can be performed by the team in the allotted schedule. The client can understand the approximate cost of each feature and thus decide upon the priority of features and the need for additional iterations.

Other Advantages

• Its fluidity and openness allows teams to be adaptable to the constant evolution of functional and technical landscape.
• The focus is always on the speedy delivery of business value and cuts down the risksassociated with software development. 
• Development iterations allow for teams to add features or shift priorities based on testing feedback.