What is Agile Methodology?
Agile methodology is a collection of practices used in project management and software development. It promotes continuous iteration in development and testing throughout the SDLC lifecycle.
Agile allows the team to work in smaller increments, optimize the performance, and deliver value to customers efficiently. The team responds to the changes quickly.
Agile Model vs. Waterfall Model
Agile and waterfall models help to come up with high-quality software. They are the two potential ways of delivering projects. Are you finding it difficult to choose the best one for your project? Understanding the differences between Agile and Waterfall models will help you choose the right for the successful accomplishment of a project. You can’t conclude which methodology is better. It all depends on the project you take up and the level of clarity.
Benefits of Agile Methodology
Agile methodology is suitable for organizations looking ahead to transform the way of working as a whole. Here are the benefits of offered Agile methodology:
• The delivery of any software is determined and greater attention is given to the designing phase.
• Stakeholders and the development team, work in collaboration throughout the process. They are involved at the sprint review meeting to look at the product features and functionalities and check if it meets their expectations. Their feedback can be incorporated at any phase of the development.
• After delivering the features and functionalities to the stakeholders, it enhances their satisfaction level.
Phases of Agile Methodology
Understanding the concept
It is vital to have a thorough understanding of Agile necessity at the initial phase, how it benefits the organization and clients, and how to accomplish the end goal. It is the phase wherein the vision and scope of the project is created.
The purpose of using Agile methodology is to adapt to the change and integrate it into the existing business processes. Thus, this feature should be flexible enough and the success of the project can be envisioned at this stage.
Inception
Having a versatile team is indeed the next big step for the success of a project as they are accountable from the planning till the delivery phase. The team should have the flexibility to change anything required at any phase. Initial requirements must be discussed and decided at this phase.
Iteration
The project team begins to work adhering to the project roadmap focusing on feedback and iteration requirements. Consider the feedback and design a re-plan approach for the next iterations.
Release
This phase is where quality testing, reporting, documentation (internal and external), and training are considered for the production phase.
Production
The production phase helps you to track your project status regularly, ensure it is optimized and ready to adapt to any uncertainties.
Retirement
Here comes the final phase of Agile methodology. Before ending a project, it is the team’s responsibility to review the project and meet the desired goals.
Key Agile Methodologies
Agile methodologies are of various types. Each of the methodologies refers to a set of conventions that the team should follow for their organization. Here we shall discuss a few of the prominent Agile methodologies:
Scrum
Scrum framework is one of the best Agile methodology suitable for complex projects. This is mainly used for handling iterative and incremental projects. The scrum framework is widely used by 58% of the organizations, and the remaining are combined with other methodologies. The framework involves roles like Product Owner and Scrum Master.
Kanban
Kanban framework visualizes the workflow and also limit the work-in-progress. Unlike Scrum, there is no fixed time approach in kanban methodology. There are no sprints in Kanban as the team starts their work from the beginning. This framework is useful in unpredictable circumstances wherein the deployment needs to be done immediately.
Lean Software Development
Lean comes under Agile methodology as it shares a few of the values like easy adapt to change. It mainly focuses on recognizing and eliminating the waste to speed up the entire development process, create knowledge, and quick delivery. Lean allows optimizing the resources and development time as well, thereby delivering customer requirements.
Crystal
This methodology mainly focuses on people and interactions instead of using tools and processes. This methodology’s primary focus is to improve communication among the team and implement continuous integration and user involvement.
Crystal methodology is of various forms like Crystal Clear, Crystal Red, Crystal Orange, Crystal Yellow, etc. You can choose based on project priorities and team size.
Extreme Programming
This methodology is useful for projects that need changing requirements from the customers. Another scenario where this methodology can be used is, when the product owner is not clear on the product’s functionalities.
Extreme programming supports 12 processes for software development:
1. Planning Game
2. Small Releases
3. Customer Acceptance Tests
4. Simple Design
5. Pair Programming
6. Test-Driven Development
7. Refactoring
8. Continuous Integration
9. Collective Code Ownership
10. Coding Standards
11. Metaphor
12. Sustainable Pace
Feature Driven Development
Feature Driven Development helps to create software models regularly and an appropriate design plan for every feature. This requires more documentation than any other methodologies and is suitable for the team having advanced design and planning skills.
Feature Driven Development breaks down the project into simple steps:
1. Model overview
2. Build a feature list
3. Plan by feature
4. Design by feature
5. Build by feature
Best Practices of Agile Methodology
Agile methodology has become one of the most popular methodologies that every organization should implement in place. Here is a list of few Agile best practices that one should be familiar with.
Let’s take a look at these practices:
Iterative Development
The concept of iterative development is about breaking a bigger project into easily manageable smaller chunks. This step involves continuous iterations in repetitive cycles. The teams must have a clear idea regarding the functionalities of the project.
Reducing Waste
The concept of reducing waste in Agile methodology is about removing the tasks or events that don’t have any value in the entire process. Doing so, provides an overall idea about adding value to the business process to achieve goals within time.
Continuous Improvement
Incorporating continuous improvement process in Agile methodology helps to attain desired results adhering to customer requirements with reduced waste.
Scrum Meetings
Scrum meeting is all about conducting daily meetings involving all the team members and supervised by a product owner. The session lasts about 15-20 minutes. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss previous day tasks, current-day work, and any obstacles encountered.
Sprint demo meetings
Sprint demo meeting is held to explain the functionality features to clients. Customers confirm the acceptance of features included according to their requirements and expectations.
Retrospective Meetings
A retrospective meeting is about conducting the final iterative development of the project involving all the team members (Clients may also be part of the meeting). The meeting involves various activities such as processes improvisation, tools, and quality of work.
Burndown Charts
Burndown charts are used to monitor the progress of the project and ensure that the work is on track. A graphical representation of the pending work and tasks done will be provided against time.
Source: invensislearning.com
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