Agile Methodology is a people-focused, results-focused approach to software development that respects our rapidly changing world. It’s centered around adaptive planning, self-organization, and short delivery times. It’s flexible, fast, and aims for continuous improvements in quality, using frameworks like scrum and extreme programming (XP).
The methodology works by first admitting that the old “waterfall” method of software development leaves a lot to be desired. The process of “plan, design, build, test, deliver” works okay for making cars or buildings, but not as well for creating software systems. In a business environment, where hardware, demand, and competition are all swiftly-changing variables, agile works by walking the fine line between too much process and not enough.
Before covering how agile works, its characteristics, and some of its different flavors, let’s talk about history, so you understand, at least at a high-level, how agile came to be. As you’ve just seen in the previous section, agile happened as a reaction against the shortcomings of the waterfall model. In the 1990s, several different software development methodologies appeared, with the idea of doing things differently than waterfall and other process-heavy systems. Though these methodologies differed in the details, they all shared many similarities:
In 2001, 17 software consultants that had been experimenting and promoting their methodologies got together to talk about their approaches. The result of this meeting was the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, which laid out the values and principles of agile software development.
Keep in mind that, even though we use the term “agile methodology” throughout this article, agile isn’t a single thing. Instead of a single approach, think of agile as an umbrella term for several different methodologies—of which scrum and XP are the most well-known—that share a number of characteristics.
Agile abandons the risk of spending months or years on a process that ultimately fails because of some small mistake in an early phase. The methodology relies instead on trusting employees and teams to work directly with customers to understand the goals and provide solutions in a fast and incremental way.
For training purposes, there’s a comprehensive, downloadable overview here.
Let’s now briefly cover how agile differs from waterfall.
The first and most obvious difference between waterfall and the agile methodologies is that the former has sequential, well-defined phases. Development flows from one phase to the next. While in the later, development occurs in a sequence of short, iterative cycles that go on indefinitely.
In waterfall, testing is a phase that comes at the very end of the process. As a result, major problems are often detected very late in the process, making them harder and more expensive to fix. On the other hand, testing isn’t a phase in agile, but an activity that occurs from the very beginning—you can research later about “shift left testing.”
Also, waterfall assumes that requirements gathering occurs perfectly. Requirements are then perfectly converted into a detailed design for the whole project, which then has to simply be implemented. Agile, on the other hand, recognizes that there’s no such thing as requirements gathering. The role of the software development team is to help and guide the clients to understand what the requirements are. Also, agile recognizes that a big design upfront isn’t possible or even desirable. Requirements are bound to change during the course of the process, due to several possible factors, including legislation, customer input, the company pivoting its focus, and so on.
So, instead of creating a big plan and committing rigidly to it, agile enthusiasts believe it makes more sense to deliver smaller amounts of software constantly, to be able to swiftly respond to change.
Agile is an iterative software development methodology that helps developers create and deliver applications more quickly and efficiently. It’s based on the principles of collaboration, customer feedback, and the “three C’s”—card, conversation, and confirmation.
A card in user stories in agile is a way of breaking down user stories into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be easily monitored and identified. Each card may include additional information such as priority level or estimated completion date for further support of project management. By breaking down the stories into individual cards, developers can focus on one specific aspect at a time, making tracking progress easier and identifying any potential changes or issues before they become problems during development.
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The second C of agile is a conversation, which emphasizes frequent communication between team members to identify any possible changes or issues before they become problems during development. This involves regularly discussing progress updates with stakeholders and providing feedback for any feature requests or bug reports to ensure the final product meets all quality assurance standards required by the customer.
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Finally, the third C of Agile is confirmation, which allows customers to review and test features before making them available in production environments. This helps to ensure applications are error-free while also giving developers valuable insights into customer preferences so they can make necessary improvements before release.
The most popular and common examples of agile are scrum, extreme programming (XP), feature driven development (FDD), dynamic systems development method (DSDM), adaptive software development (ASD), Crystal, and lean software development (LSD). Teams generally pick one or two methods. The most widely used methodologies are scrum and XP, which dovetail nicely. Scrum is a hands-on system consisting of simple interlocking steps and components:
Bill meets with a customer to discuss her company’s needs. Those needs are the product backlog. Bill chooses the most important tasks to work on in the next two weeks. His team meets in a daily scrum to target work for the day ahead and address roadblocks. At the end of the sprint, Bill delivers the work, reviews the backlog, and sets the goal for the next sprint. The cycle repeats until the software is complete.
eXtreme Programming. Often used with scrum, XP is an example of how Agile can heighten customer satisfaction. Rather than deliver everything the customer could ever want far in the future, it gives them what they need now, fast. XP is centered on frequent releases and short development cycles. It uses code review, pair programming, unit testing, and frequent communication with the customer.
Here’s an example of how XP works: Bill builds a list of customer requirements by having the customer tell “user stories” that outline the features. From these, he builds a software release plan. The software will be delivered in iterations, with one delivered every couple weeks. The team works in programmer pairs, using daily meetings to smooth roadblocks. The customer delivers feedback in the form of more user stories. The cycle repeats until the software is delivered.
For more examples, see this article.
The benefits of agile are tied directly to its faster, lighter, more engaged mindset. The process, in a nutshell, delivers what the customer wants, when the customer wants it. There’s much less wasted time spent developing in the wrong direction, and the entire system is quicker to respond to changes. For a more comprehensive list of benefits, see this post.
The list of best practices is long and involved, with dozens of tools to pick and choose. We’ve outlined a short list of the main benefits below. For a more comprehensive best practices guide, see this article.
The list below shows some of the best tools on offer. For a complete list, see this post.
Is agile a silver bullet? Should it be used all the time? Many people would be quick to give an answer and why, but the question deserves more careful consideration.
To understand why, we have to think of the characteristics of agile methodologies and the types of projects most well-suited to those characteristics. In short, we could summarize the agile methodologies as an approach that enables teams to quickly adapt to change. As such, it makes sense that agile shines in projects where there’s a lot of change.
For instance, think of a startup still trying to find market fit for its product or service. This is a very volatile scenario: things are bound to change quickly, because the company isn’t rock-solid about what it’s building. It’s common for companies at this stage to pivot after a round of investment or a change in leadership. In such a chaotic scenario, it’s simply logical to adopt a methodology that enables the team to respond to change.
Now think of the opposite extreme: an organization in a highly-regulated industry, where things change at a very slow pace. This organization doesn’t need to react as quickly to change, since change isn’t happening so often. Also, this type of organization might benefit from—or even require, due to regulations—the same types of bureaucratic processes that agile parishioners frown upon. That doesn’t mean such an organization needs to adopt the classical waterfall model, but maybe a hybrid approach that combines that best lessons from agile with a bit more process and structure would be the perfect alternative.
Make use of the non-product tools and resources for success below, including the original agile manifesto and a few downloadable templates for implementation.
Agile is a popular development methodology widely used by development teams who need to ship apps efficiently. But agile development requires agile support, so dev leaders must arm their teams with the tools and resources they need to succeed. Check out this post for some valuable tips for making agile less fragile. Also, check out our great list of scrum boards.
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