Agile methodology is a type of project management process, mainly used for software development, where demands and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customers.
Stemming from the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, it was created as a response to the inadequacies of traditional development methods such as the Waterfall method.
The software industry is a highly competitive market due to the fact that software is something that can be continuously upgraded. This means that developers need to constantly improve and innovate their products to keep on top of the game — and the linear, sequential approach of the Waterfall method just wasn’t cutting it.
An agile software development process always starts by defining the users and documenting a vision statement on a scope of problems, opportunities and values to be addressed. The product owner captures this vision and works with a multidisciplinary team (or teams) to deliver on this vision.
Benefits of the agile method are considerable, such as:
- Stakeholder engagement
- Focus on users
- Early and predictable delivery
- Predictable costs and schedule
- Allows for change
For businesses to succeed in today’s market, they must be able to rapidly and reliably deliver product increments to customers. More importantly, they need to be nimble and able to respond to feedback from these customers. This means a move away from the predominant way of organizing, managing and funding work.
For small companies, agile transformation can be straightforward—since getting alignment can be accomplished by getting everyone in a room and creating a shared understanding.
However, for large, complex organizations with legacy technology architecture, transformation must be carefully orchestrated to ensure that the work and investment made in making the change create business value and actually leads to agility.
Want to learn more? Tonex offers courses in Agile training:
Agile Programming Workshop (3 days) – Participants learn the agile thinking and framework and how to apply agile to your software and system projects, Learn about the changes necessary to implement agile in your projects and programs.
Introduction to Agile Programming and Software Development (2 days) – Participants learn the basics of the agile method and how to apply this methodology to programming and software development projects.
For more information, questions, comments, contact us.