Published: 21 May 2020
Agile Methodology – An Effective Guide for Businesses
Last Updated: 25 Apr 2022
Content 1. What is Agile Methodology 2. Agile Development Methodology Features 3. What are the principles of Agile Methodology 4. Agile Manifesto Principles 5. Benefits of Agile Methodology 6. Significance of Agile Methodology for Businesses 7. Types of Agile Methodologies and Frameworks 8. Conclusion
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools 2. Working software over comprehensive documentation 3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 4. Responding to change over following a plan
Evidently, the agile methodology steps and the process revolves around iterations as priorities can be shifted from iteration to iteration and new features tend to be added into the next iteration. Basically any agile manifesto is followed by some important agile principles which businesses should essentially know and adapt in their agile software development process.
– Ensures early and quality deliverables – Addresses any changes within the project through change adoption – Delivers more business value as features are delivered based on the customer’s business importance – Ensures faster releases to enable faster time to market – Ensures high-quality development by breaking up project into manageable units of sprints – Ensures effective collaboration between teams and stakeholders to deliver value to customer – Eases dealing with costs & schedules with effective collaboration to ensure a more controlled environment – Delivers working software at frequent intervals through sprints – Overall ensures cost effectiveness
1. Agile Scrum Methodology 2. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 3. Lean Software Development 4. Kanban 5. Extreme Programming (XP) 6. Crystal Methodology 7. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) 8. Feature Driven Development (FDD)
This type of agile methodology is one of the most dominant agile methodology followed by enterprises. It is exclusively used by 58% of organizations and another 18% use it combined with other agile methods. This is a light-weight agile project management framework that is effectively used for controlling and managing iterative and incremental projects.
The scrum consists of various roles and responsibilities that are given below: – A Scrum Master is responsible for the team overview, for planning of sprint meetings and also ensures proper collaboration between teams – There is a Product Owner who is responsible for product backlog creation and for delivery of the functionalities. The Product Backlog consists of features, bug fixes, other non-functional requirements, etc. – The Scrum team manages the work and is responsible to develop features and deliver them for each sprint cycle – Each iteration of scrum is called sprint and teams work on defined sprint backlog – Daily scrum meetings are conducted to evaluate the progress of the scrum teams – At the end of each sprint, team delivers functionalities developed and tested during that period to the product owner This is the most commonly used agile methodology and is suitable for all types of projects.
This is a leading framework for scaling Agile across the enterprise. This methodology is used by world’s largest organizations to achieve the benefits of lean agile software and ensures systems development at scale. This SAFe drives faster time to market, increases productivity & quality while also improving employee engagement.
This methodology has been designed exclusively to deliver value on a regular basis and with predictable schedules for businesses. This method also provides a knowledge base of effective and integrated principles and practices to support enterprise agility.
It is an iterative type of agile methodology and is a way of optimizing people, resources, effort, and energy of an organization with a basic aim of creating value to the customer. It is based on the principles of continuous improvement, eliminate waste, build quality in, create knowledge, defer commitment, deliver fast, respect people, and optimize the whole basic principles.
In this Lean software methodology, along with all its underlined principles, every business represents a value stream. This value stream consists of activities required to design, develop and deliver a product or a service to the customer. By using this lean methodology, optimizing development time and resources is achieved. This methodology ensures delivering only what the customer needs.
The tern Kanban is a Japanese term in which “Kan” refers to “visual” and “ban” means a “card” or “board.” There are some differences between Kanban and scrum methodology. In Kanban approach, there are no fixed time boxes for anything like we have sprints in scrum model.
The tasks are larger in Kanban and are relatively less of them than when compared to a scrum. The period of assessments is also less and visibly there is no speed in the team in Kanban. Typically, only an average time for full implementation is counted. As there are no sprints, teams work on a task from beginning to the end.
The teams work from a Kanban board which based on team’s requirements consists of certain columns stated from left to right. Some of the common columns include Goals, Story queue, Elaboration & Acceptance, Development, Test, Deployment and Done columns. A special column with term ‘Expedite’ might be there which has the top-priority tasks placed in them.
Overall, this Kanban methodology consists of three basic rules that include divide your work into tasks, limit the work in progress, and measure cycle time. Therefore, based on the business need, this method can be leveraged by businesses. Kanban technique is normally utilized by teams involved in maintenance and production support activities.
This agile technique is useful for projects with constantly changing demands or requirements from the customers. This methodology is also useful when the product owner is not very sure about the functionality of their proposed system. In such situations, this methodology holds to be very effective.
This XP approach ensures frequent releases of the product in short development cycles. It has checkpoints placed within the process where any new customer requirements can be easily implemented. Highly useful for businesses unsure about requirements of their proposed project.
This is one of the agile methodology which primarily focuses on people and interactions while working on a project rather than giving importance to processes and tools. It is one of the most light-weight and flexible approaches to develop software.
The crystal approach properties include teamwork, communication, simplicity, reflection, responding and reporting, reasoning, frequent adjustments and improve processes. Moreover, crystal method focuses on people involved, interaction between teams, community, skills, talents of people involved, etc. Hence, crystal approach can be adopted by businesses for projects of different sizes.
It is an agile methodology project delivery framework that is used for developing software and non-IT solutions and it forms a part of the Agile Alliance. This DSDM testing framework covers a wide range of activities across the development lifecycle and includes specific foundations and governance.
Some of the principles of DSDM include focus on business need, deliver on time, collaborate, never compromise quality, build incrementally from firm foundations, develop iteratively, communicate continuously and clearly along with demonstrate control.
It is an iterative and incremental software development process and blends a number of industry recognized best practices into a cohesive whole. Its main purpose is to deliver tangible working software in a timely manner, repeatedly.
The project lifecycle includes developing an overall model, building a feature list, planning by each feature, designing by feature and finally building by feature. It is a simple five step process and ensures larger project teams to move products forward with continuous success.
This agile methodology framework leverages pre-defined development standards which makes the teams to move quickly. It is best suited for large corporations or for those businesses working on large-scale software projects.
Today, agile methodology is more beneficial to every project development process as it ensures effective communication between teams, and ensures quality outcomes. This process of agile approach enhances the innovation as multidisciplinary teams collaborate and ensure business value with the product owner involvement throughout the delivery process.
This agile approach ensures enhanced communication with close collaboration, and brings about organizational adoption to changes to deliver value to the business owner. Various agile methodologies can be leveraged by businesses based on the project size and based on the project need.
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