10 Reasons To Use Agile Software Development Process

Posted by AnooshTech on May 16th, 2013

Although relatively new, the Agile Software Development process has proven to be a highly effective and instrumental tool in getting development teams streamlined and communicating on a regular basis. One of the biggest complaints in the Toronto software industry is that projects often run longer than expected and cost more than anticipated. The Agile Software Development process provides a means for management to stay abreast of completed work and for teams to stay in constant contact to ensure the progress of the work is as expected.

Initially, it may take some work to get the process implemented and to convince teams of its value. However, understanding the benefits of the process will help you to see why it is well worth the effort to bring your development teams into a more regimental process with frequent meetings.

So how exactly do you benefit from the Agile software Development process available in software development industry in Toronto? Here are 10 reasons that aptly demonstrate just how much heartache you and your team can be spared by taking the time to implement the process.

1) Open lines of communication

Because developers spend so much time focused on coding and their own singular part of a project, they are less likely to be aware of what other are doing, especially areas like QA and documentation. In the past, this had resulted in many gaps and failings in various software developments in Toronto as programmers duplicate work or entirely fail to realize how their work affects others.

8) Communicate evolving client expectations

Just because you have been working on a project for a couple of months does not mean that the client has kept the same goals or expectations. As new requests and changes to the plan come in, you and the team will be able to discuss them and determine the best path forward. This is significantly better than the conventional method, usually followed in Toronto, of people hearing through the grape vine and holding up work while they try to figure out if the rumours are true and how it will affect their work.

3) Find problems earlier in the process

This is probably the most important reason to use Agile process. As you and your teams meet on a regular basis, you will begin to see the problems early on in the process, giving you a lot more time to begin remediating them. One of the three questions is “Do you have any blockers.” When the answer is yes, everyone will know that there is a problem and you will be able to seek out someone to help resolve it before the blocker becomes a missed deadline to a client.

4) Learn how to better estimate the time required to complete issues

As your team begins to run daily analyses on their work, they will start to better understand how long their tasks take to complete. Being more cognizant of the amount of time tasks take will provide two significant benefits: the team will be able to more accurately gauge how much time is required to complete the project and they will gain a better appreciation for the work done by the other members of the team. The end result is a much more streamlined approach to the project as it progresses.

5) Define the requirements

When working through tasks it is easy to forget what the focus is. By regularly meeting at the beginning and end of a sprint, your team will keep the requirements in mind, as well as being kept informed when there are changes to the requirements. This has often helped many software developers in Toronto from getting too caught up in enhancements that are beyond the scope. These can be logged for later if the group decides it should be done but there is not time in the current development cycle.

6) Prepare for testing

QA usually does not get as much time as they would like to properly test new functionality and defect corrections. As your team becomes more integrated, they will be able to more accurately gauge how their work will affect the QA team. And the QA team will already know what kind of problems to anticipate when they are doing their testing of the updated software. As developers complete their work, QA will be better able to plan for when testing will be required instead of the QA team wondering when work will pick up again.

7) Streamline change management

As you and the team will be meeting on a regular basis, you will be able to analyze your change management process to see where things work well, what things are broken, and what aspects could be improved. Future projects will greatly benefit from the frequent scrutiny of the change management process.

8) Determine a flow that works well for everyone involved

Similar to being able to review change management, having all of the team talking every day will help you to establish a flow that focuses on the needs of the project and the team. After all, there is not a single solution to creating a process flow that will work well for a development team because all teams are different. Regular meetings and discussions will encourage the team to think in terms of the group instead of simply working in a vacuum. As the team learns who best to work through the process, you will be able to develop a flow that fits each team. For future projects you will be able to pick up the same process and make modifications to fit new teams.

9) Gain a better understanding of the process flow from start to finish

Odds are you will not have the perfect process flow at the beginning, but as the project progresses you will be able to determine the best flow for your group. If you can keep the same team for future projects, you will already have a flow that you know works. If you have a new developer team, at least you have a place to start and you can make changes to the flow as you learn how each team member works.

10) Discuss problems and how to avoid similar issues in the future

One of the most important aspects of the Agile process is holding regular retrospective. The retrospective gives the team time to pause to analyze the sprint for the good, the bad, and the issues. Every sprint should include a retrospective so that you and the team can stay aware of the types of issues and how best to resolve them.

The Agile Software Development process does seem a bit difficult at first, but within the first month you should begin to see just how effective a tool it is. The primary purpose is to facility more communication and to keep the team on the same pace. With so many positive benefits, reasons for implementing an Agile Software Development process will exceed any argument against it.

About The Author:
AnooshTech is now a vibrant team of software developers and programmers who have experience of providing Custom Software Solutions to a variety of clients from numerous industries.

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AnooshTech
Joined: May 16th, 2013
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