Agile Development

1. Abhinav Regmi
KCM
BBIS (2008-2012)

2. What is Agile Development?
 Agile software development is a group of software
development methods based on iterative and
incremental development, where requirements and
solutions evolve through collaboration between self-
organizing, cross-functional teams.
 It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary
development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative
approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response
to change.

4. Characteristics
 Agile methods break tasks into small increments with
minimal planning and do not directly involve long-
term planning.
 Iterations are short time frames that typically last from
one to four weeks.
 Each iteration involves a team working through a full
software development cycle, including planning,
requirements analysis, design, coding, unit
testing, and acceptance testing when a working
product is demonstrated to stakeholders.
 This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to
adapt to changes quickly.

5. Contd.
 Team composition in an agile project is usually cross-
functional and self-organizing, without consideration
for any existing corporate hierarchy or the corporate
roles of team members.
 Team members normally take responsibility for tasks
that deliver the functionality an iteration requires.
 They decide individually how to meet an iteration's
requirements.

6. Contd.
 Agile methods emphasize face-to-face communication over
written documents when the team is all in the same
location.
 Most agile teams work in a single open office which
facilitates such communication.
 Team size is typically small (5-9 people) to simplify team
communication and team collaboration.
 Larger development efforts can be delivered by multiple
teams working toward a common goal or on different parts
of an effort.
 This might require a coordination of priorities across
teams.
 When a team works in different locations, they maintain
daily contact through videoconferencing, voice, e-mail,
etc.

7. How Agile is Different
 Focus on collaboration:
 Less paperwork and more conversation
 Stakeholders actively involved
 Focus on working software:
 Greater feedback makes agile projects easier to manage
 Less documentation is required
 Less bureaucracy
 Agilists are generalizing specialists:
 Less hand offs between people
 Less people required
 Specialists find it difficult at first to fit into the team
 Agile is based on practice, not theory:
 This is a significant change from traditional
 You need to see how agile works in practice to truly understand it

8. Challenges of Agile

9. Challenges of Agile
 Some of the primary challenges observed in organizations
moving towards an Agile mindset are:
 People working as cohesive teams and not a set of individuals
 Increased visibility into the work that is actually done
 Titles become redundant
 Privacy is less important than sharing
 Costs often increase when implementing change

10. Contd.
 Failure is acceptable, as long as it is identified earlier
 Consistent velocity versus peaks and troughs
 Micro management is felt even though teams are supposed
to be self-organizing.
 Teams need support from multiple directions.
 Reactionary is acceptable and expected.
 Target scope often moves, thus less upfront design

11. Agile methods
 SCRUM and eXtreme Programming [XP] are the most
common).
 These methodologies consist of best practices and
processes that, when development teams align with them,
lead to the following positive outcomes:
 •Increased quality of code delivered
 •Teams evolving to constantly get better
 •Higher levels of customer satisfaction (both internal and
external)
 •Consistency in delivery estimates

12. Comparison with other methods
 Traditional Methods: sequential phased approach. Eg.
Water flow model.
 Project Phase
Requirement Architecture
Code Test
Analysis & Design
Deploy

13.  Iterative approach: Overlapping phases of
development. Eg. Agile development.

14. Criticism
 Agile methodologies have been criticized for lacking any scientifically-
based evidence to support their proponents' claims.
 Another common criticism of agile software development methods is
that it is developer-centric rather than user-centric.
 Agile software development focuses on processes for getting
requirements and developing code and does not focus on product
design.
 Agile methodologies can also be inefficient in large organizations and
certain types of projects.
 Agile methods seem best for developmental and non-sequential
projects.
 Many organizations believe that agile methodologies are too extreme,
and adopt a hybrid approach that mixes elements of agile and plan-
driven approaches.

16. THANK YOU