Going Agile
From the image above, I guess you might have an idea of what this is about… We can see a group of people(or a team) sitting by a round table possibly working together, having a discussion, trying out a new feature etc.
In the world of software development, one of the main goals of adopting and going Agile ? is to produce working, quality software in short, fast increments also known as continuous delivery.
Agile, loosely defined, is the “ability to move and think quickly and easily” or “to move in a quick, coordinate fashion”. How possible is this? Stick with me and I’ll tell you how…
Agile Manifesto
Agile is a set of principles and values listed formally in the Agile Manifesto, established in 2001.The four main values are:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.
There is value on items on both sides but the items on the left are valued more.
Going Agile is all about communication, collaboration, continuous improvement. This results in more productive teams and faster delivery of projects, if everyone follow the set rules.
Some of the Benefits of Going Agile:
- Agile provides a great way for organizations to manage uncertainty. By committing to only small bites of work (a sprint), this provides them with a method of effectively dealing with rapidly changing priorities and resource constraints.
- Agile helps improve team work through the following sessions(daily scrums/stand ups, sprint retrospective)
- Agile helps improve innovation: Team mates coming together can help solve large technical problems in a short period of time.
- Agile helps improve transparency with the different tools and frameworks(sprint planning, backlogs eg. Trello etc)
Agile vs Waterfall
- Agile is based on continuous delivery of development and testing iterations, Waterfall is a sequential life cycle model.
- In Waterfall, one phase ends before the next begins but that is not the case with Agile.
- Waterfall values planning ahead while Agile values adaptability and involvement.
Some Agile Frameworks
These are different approaches for implementing Agile. i.e. planning, managing and executing tasks. They fall into two categories: Frameworks for teams, and frameworks to help firms practice Agile at scale, across many teams.
Agile for teams: Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban, Scrumban, Scrum of Scrums.
Agile at scale: SAFe, Disciplined Agile, LeSS, Nexus, Spotify Model,Scrum@Scale.
