Agile Methodology

What is the Agile Methodology?

Agile is one of the big buzzwords of the IT development industry. But exactly what is agile development? Put simply, agile development is a different way of managing IT development teams and projects. The use of the word agile in this context derives from the agile manifesto. A small group of people got together in 2001 to discuss their feelings that the traditional approach to managing software development projects was failing far too often, and there had to be a better way. They came up with the agile manifesto, which describes 4 important values that are as relevant today as they were then. It says, “we value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile development methodology provides opportunities to assess the direction of a project throughout the development lifecycle. This is achieved through regular cadences of work, known as sprints or iterations, at the end of which teams must present a potentially shippable product increment. By focusing on the repetition of abbreviated work cycles as well as the functional product they yield, agile methodology is described as “iterative” and “incremental.” In waterfall, development teams only have one chance to get each aspect of a project right. In an agile paradigm, every aspect of development — requirements, design, etc. — is continually revisited throughout the lifecycle. When a team stops and re-evaluates the direction of a project every two weeks, there’s always time to steer it in another direction. The results of this “inspect-and-adapt” approach to development greatly reduce both development costs and time to market. Because teams can develop software at the same time they’re gathering requirements, the phenomenon known as “analysis paralysis” is less likely to impede a team from making progress. And because a team’s work cycle is limited to two weeks, it gives stakeholders recurring opportunities to calibrate releases for success in the real world. Agile development methodology helps companies build the right product. Instead of committing to market a piece of software that hasn’t even been written yet, agile empowers teams to continuously replan their release to optimize its value throughout development, allowing them to be as competitive as possible in the marketplace. Development using an agile methodology preserves a product’s critical market relevance and ensures a team’s work doesn’t wind up on a shelf, never released.

See Also

• Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Agile Absorption
• Agile Business Analysis (AgileBA)
• Agile Marketing Project Management
• Agile Model Driven Development (AMDD)
• Agile Modeling (AM)
• Agile NeoRAD

CIO Desk Reference

(Relevant content on this topic in the CIO Toolkit on CIO Index)

• Agile Methods Return on Investment (ROI) Calculation
• Agile Methodology Guide