About ninety-five percent of respondents worldwide (number of available respondents over forty thousand) prefer Agile DEV methodologies. But what exactly does Agile DEV methodology entail? And how can you utilize it to uplift your companies’ growth? Well, to find the answers to these questions, dig deeper into this article as we are going to unravel the wonders of Agile Development, leaving no stones unturned. We shall look at product development via agile methodologies, core agile methodology values, agile development principles, and so much more. Hence without further ado, let us dive right into it.

Agile Briefing

Agile development follows the incremental and iterative model in promoting cross-functional setups of teams across an organization. Through agile development, organizations organize tasks in time-boxed sprints, gain to and from flexibility movement across a development cycle, plus the added advantage of faster marketing. All this is made possible by agile through collaborative teamwork towards the companies’ set goals. Through agile, companies can achieve a lot in a short period.

So what exactly is Agile DEV Methodology?

Up to three-quarters of organizations worldwide utilize the agile approach at some point, often, or even always. 

Agile DEV methodology is a pretty innovative approach applied by organizations developing software while prioritizing speed and flexibility during the development process. Agile brings in incremental and iterative development methodologies that ensure accelerated and foolproof delivery.

Traditional software methodologies, for example, waterfall, were utilized by a lot of companies in the past. However, these methodologies had one major downside; they did not permit backward movement. Hence adding in newer features became an issue, and maintenance was pretty hectic too.

Later on, the agile process came by and solved these issues posed by traditional software development approaches. An organization can now work on projects incrementally through agile methodologies and ultimately backtrack to solve or add in newer features.

Agile VS Waterfall process Comparison

Agile methodology attributes

• Iterative development – It handles feature creeps and bugs
• Incremental development – the development of software products in tinier segments that merge to generate a larger software product later. 
• Working on tasks in time-boxed sprints – Cycles (monthly or weekly) are organized to efficiently deliver workable users’ stories.
• Setups that are cross-functional – inter-organization communication ensures a harmonious working environment.
• Efficient product backlogs management – informed decisions made before moving on to the successive project sprint cycles as per agile software product development ensures efficient product backlog management. 
• Retrospectives – An organization can learn from past mistakes and rectify the identified errors in the following projects and sprints.

What does Agile Product DEV Entail?

When organizations abide by the principles and values of agile development in the development of digital products, then this is known as Agile product DEV. Agile product DEV aims to make sure that:

1. Market-product fit 
2. The product takes a shorter period to hit the market 
3. Delivery of quality products 
4. Continuous delivery and integration 

Core Agile Methodology Values

Agile Methodology bears four main values, which are:

1. Interaction and individuals over tools and processes 

When organizations focus on communication, they prioritize interaction and individuals over tools and processes. In return, teams align and drive the organization’s project process more efficiently while at the same time responding in a faster manner to functional and businesses requirements. 

2. Software that works over comprehensive documentation

Agile methodologies streamline the documentation of a software development process. It also offers developers (agile developers) all that they require to efficiently maintain their tasks while avoiding delays due to technicalities. Agile Methodology values the documentation of software development, but it values a properly functioning program more.

3. Collaboration with customers is put over negotiations of contracts

Agile development greatly values the input from customers over negotiations of contracts. What’s more, agile allows open-ended discussions between developers and customers. Due to this communication, developers identify customer needs and align the software design and functionality to these requirements. Hence this eliminates the possibility of producing applications that customers cannot utilize.

4. Responding to changes over following a preset plan

Customers might provide negative feedback regarding a portion of the already built application when developing agile methodologies. If this happens then, developers backtrack and make changes instead of moving on to the next sprint.

Stages followed when developing a Project using Agile Methodologies 

An organization that utilizes agile methodologies does so in different ways. Agile isn’t a pre-decided road to success which organizations should follow strictly. Instead, agile brings in retrospective practices and daily standups, which helps organizations learn from them and get better results.

Here are the steps followed in agile development:

Requirement gathering 

Testers, developers, designers, product owners, and a scrum master all work together to prioritize user problems that can easily be solved. 

Daily standups and scrums ensure meaningful and regular brainstorming sessions.

Design

Developers, architects, and designers work hand in hand to create the UI and UX and its corresponding software architecture for the organizations’ software product.

Develop 

Engineering teams take up the developed software architecture then create user stories using time-boxed sprints. After every sprint, they work with the team in charge of testing to identify then fix errors. 

Agile developers also use paired programming where one programmer writes the code while the other one reviews each line of typed code. In doing so, they find and fix errors early hence making the testing phase less strenuous.

Testing 

Agile testing teams get called after every sprint to track and fix inconsistencies and bugs. These teams carry out a couple of tests on the software then provide feedback to the software developers. The software developers then later on plan and then fix the program code errors in the next sprint. 

Pair testing can also be implemented in this stage, where two testers work on the code simultaneously. One finds the errors via tests while the other develops a report based on the tests.

Deployment

The deployment stage in agile development involves the launching of the complete user story out into the market. MVP (basic program versions) are released first, then the other launches and user stories follow up as users provide feedback.

Maintenance 

The maintenance stage involves the maintenance of a software product to ensure that the software product accommodates any newer changes that might occur. What’s more, maintenance ensures that organizations fix bugs and feature inconsistencies that might occur after the project has been launched.

Agile Development Methodologies 

Agile bears so many methodologies, which include:

• Scrum 

In this framework, employees can quickly address challenging adaptive issues and efficiently and productively deliver products of pretty high value.

• Lean 

In lean, teams working on a project get to properly utilize effective value streams mapping to ensure that they deliver outstanding quality products to customers. It is also iterative.

• Kanban 

Kanban utilizes a management-of-visual-workflow strategy, which lets employees manage the creation of products. It focuses on continuous product delivery without the SDLC stress (Software development life cycle).

• Dynamic System Development Method 

DSDM emphasizes software projects. It is labeled by budgets and tight schedules, which ensure frequent product cycle delivery and iterative but still incremental development. 

• Extreme programming 

In Extreme programming, also known as paired programming or XP, organizations try to boost interpersonal relationships to boost software DEV success.

• Feature Driven Development

FDD focuses on really short iterations; hence it delivers products in a short period. It is, however, only suitable for large programming teams.

• Crystal

Crystal methodology circles around: 

Simplicity 

Teamwork 

Communication 

Interactions  

Community 

Talents 

Conclusion 

Agile development brings about great harmony in an organization which ultimately boosts production rate and quality, guaranteeing great profit. It is the best approach to implement to gain significant profits.

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