What are Agile Methodologies and why are they important to your project?
Agile Methodologies are a set of software development practices that helps to deliver a project faster, with quality assurance and frequent interactions with the client. As the methodology predicts inspections and constant adaptations, it influences the capacity of the team to deal with unexpected issues and make changes before the project gets finished.
Most part of the software projects suffer with serious development issues, and many times they aren’t even finished due to the lack of a methodology that can control the problematic aspects of the project
Most part of the software projects suffer with serious development issues, and many times they aren’t even finished due to the lack of a methodology that can control the problematic aspects of the project
With a simple methodology like, for instance, Scrum or Kanban, these projects would have their flaws identified quickly and the process would follow the regular flow until the project conclusion, with the client evaluating each development cycle and adapting the project in each iteration, delivering new features that would aggregate value to the project in each cycle.
But what is it, and what is different from the traditional process?
The Agile Methods are different from the conventional project management, like the Waterfall method, as it works with small units of development that are constantly evaluated by the stakeholders and can be fixed or changed quickly. In the classic or heavy methods once the project is planned and started, it’s like a moving train: the needed effort to make it stop or change its course is huge and very often it’s not possible to stop it before it reaches its destination, when it can be too late for a change to be feasible.
Beyond that, the Agile Methodologies stimulate some key points for a development team, among them:
- Constant and recurrent communication
- Self organization of the team
- Attention focused on the client
- Small valuable deliveries that are constantly validated by the end user
- Constant improvement of the process through retrospectives or “Kaizen”
The Agile Methodologies were created by a team of notable developers that got together in 2001 to discuss their issues with the traditional development methodologies. In this meeting they elaborated the Agile Manifesto, that, with its 12 principles and 4 key values changed completely the way software has been developed since then.
The 4 key 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.
What is the importance of the agile methodologies?
The agile methodologies has become a strategic need, having in mind that the quality of the software project delivery is assured. With the method there’s a more consistent application of the ideal practices because the testing for each feature is frequent and this frequent testing makes a problem to be identified early, which by its turn makes the project to be delivered on the scheduled date with all the specifications requested by the client
Faster delivery
The client follows the development process in a real software, with the features that the client requested in each phase of the project, with frequent interactions with the developer. This way it’s possible to deliver a solid project, with quality in a short time.
Better quality
As the interactions are frequent during the development phase of the software, and the client tests and validates the software constantly, we can only deduct that the software will be always in accordance with its idealization. Through this processes, the final version of the product will be safer, solid and will specifically comply with all the client requirements.
More independent and productive team
The agile methodologies are good not only for the client, saving money and delivering the product faster. Another positive aspect that comes as a consequence of the use of the methodologies is that the development team will be more productive and will have a greater level of satisfaction. And it happens because it’s no longer necessary to worry about extensive and complicated documentations, contracts and a rigid process that would impact a quick response of the team.
This way, the team becomes more independent to organize itself and to solve the issues as they arise.
Iterativity
The iterativity relates to incremental deliveries, that occur in short units of time (sprints). In the traditional methodology, in a waterfall model, the usual approach is that the results are delivered only at the end of the development process.
In the agile methodology, the work is shared between different fronts and team, that deliver each stage of the software by the end of the development cycle (usually something between 1 and 2 weeks) and each cycle influences the next one, delivering small working units of development that aggregate value to the final product. Besides that, the client follow closelly the whole process and analyze not only the final product.
Flexibility
Oftenly issues are found during the development phase or a change of plans would be necessary during this phase. With the traditional methods these issues would have to be ignored so the original plan can be followed, and it’s in this key point that the agile methodologies differ.
As the units of development are small, issues found during the previous cycle can be treated as a priority on the next development cycle, or even a change of plans by the client can change the development priorities. It’s very quick and simple to change the scope or the direction of the project.
Transparency
As the communication is constant, the transparency is an expected result. The client is always aware of the project progress, the issues found, the priorities, the execution time, what makes the project easy to manage and the deadlines easy to predict and accomplish.
The Agile Methodologies are a tool that hugelly helps the management of a project and the benefits that comes with its use are innumerable. Those were only a few key points to understand why they are so diffused and adopted nowadays.
At Codefrog your project will always be developed using these methodologies and the final product will always be according to your plan, besides following the development process in real time and suggest the needed changes as we go, you will be able to use your software the quickest as possible, as we will deliver the MVP of your application and we will always deliver new features to your product according to your demand, increasing its functionality over time.
Beyond that, with the MVP delivery, each new addition to your project can be evaluated immediately by your audience, and then you can change your application scope as needed.
Did you like it? Get in touch with us and we can schedule a meeting to understand your project and present a solution.
Carlos Lopes
Carlos is a co-founder and CEO at Codefrog. He is a DevOps engineer and Web Developer for over 13 years, leading teams at big companies in Brazil and abroad. LinkedIn
