Modern software development is a complex and sophisticated activity. The agile techniques have emerged and evolved to support the industry. They facilitate efficient project management through various principles, tools, approaches, and cultural values. Let us have an in-depth look into them:
The Approach
The agile approach assists the development phase and the entire project lifecycle. It emphasizes iteration, adaptability, and responsiveness in product builds. The developers take a non-linear path to allocate fixed resources for a limited time. They also deliver the products using successive cycles of development. In contrast, the waterfall approach relies on the scope as a driver to evaluate the costs and time consequences.
Agile lacks a specific structure, and the managers get propelled by these four central values:
- People are prioritized over processes and tools in the project work
- Contracts take the back seat to produce client-centric outcomes
- Flexibility and responsiveness to signals are preferred over rigidity
- Problem-solving gets priority over record creation and maintenance
5 Key Components
These five primary components of the agile approach give pre-eminence to people. They make investors, managers, data architects, users, and other stakeholders crucial in the cycle.
1. User Stories
Analysts write short and simple descriptions from the client’s standpoint. They outline the quantum of work and the final product’s look.
2. Sprints
The products and services get improved in short bursts of 1 to 3 weeks. Iterations are useful to make improvements and upgrades.
3. Agile Board
Whiteboards and software visualization tools are essential for reporting team progress. They improve efficiency, commitment to work, and deadlines.
4. Scrum Meetings
These are short, daily conversations between project teams. Each member stands for 10 minutes and quickly talks about their assigned modules to others.
5. Backlogs
Unresolved tasks get assigned during sprint planning to the developers. This product backlog lists features, team activities, infrastructure changes, and bug-fixes.
Basic Principles
There is an excellent range of agile project management tools with features like real-time visualization, report generation, tracking capabilities, record maintenance, templates, and interfaces. They automate various vital processes and ensure smarter and faster team collaboration.
All these software options, however, draw inspiration from the fundamental principles. Yes, agile has a manifesto developed by software professionals to teach values. It also gives direction to various stakeholders through these important principles:
- Assure customer satisfaction by consistently delivering value in real-time.
- Be open to change during any stage of the development to benefit clients.
- Focus on frequent deliveries by emphasizing the need for faster completion.
- Customer interactions and daily team collaborations are mandatory.
- Motivate the developers by creating an environment of trust and timely support.
- Implement persuasive communication techniques like face-to-face interactions.
- The final product or working software should be a measure of success.
- Teams have to work in tandem for motivation and sustained development.
- Stress on agility without losing track of design goals and technical acumen.
- Extract maximum productivity from the least effort by keeping it simple.
- Self-organized teams can come up with significant architecture to attain the goals.
- Encourage behavioral adjustments through frequent introspection and feedback.
Common Steps
The agile approach has no uniformity, and there are multiple methodologies. The most popular ones are Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. Scrum focuses on daily activities by including the Scrum master, product owner, and team members.
Kanban achieves task-orientation using visual displays and boards, while the Lean method focuses on waste reduction, a clutter-free system, and value addition. There are other methodologies, too, like Scrumban, DSDM, Crystal, Extreme Programming, and even agile agnostic frameworks.
Despite the differences, there are some common and much necessary agile steps. They are project planning, product map creation, daily stand-ups, and sprint reviews. These steps encompass the teams, tools, daily targets, roadmaps, timelines, and SWOT analyses.
Conclusion: Excellent Benefits
Agile productivity managers note that the approach empowers people and their interactions. They also say that the methodology consistently delivers value to the enterprise in a short span:
- Client and end-user touchpoints get strengthened to build engagement.
- Facilitates a light-weight framework to reduce wastage of resources.
- Provides the management with greater control by offering flexibility.
- Incidents and issues get discovered early, and they get quickly resolved.
- It is easier to promote diverse viewpoints, idea sharing, and higher accountability.
CloudGen’s Project Management approach is an end-to-end solution that includes a vision definition, a strategy roadmap, project planning, and management, requirements, and uses case definition, system design, development, test, deployment, and evaluation. We assure quality control during the entire process.
