Dec 11

WHAT IS AGILE?

WHAT IS AGILE? 

Agile methodology was created with the purpose of speeding up the project management process within organizations, with a special focus on IT projects.

The Agile Manifesto is comprised of 4 foundational values and 12 supporting principles.

Values:

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

Principles:

  1. Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software;
  2. Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage;
  3. Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale;
  4. Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project;
  5. Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done;
  6. The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation;
  7. Working software is the primary measure of progress;
  8. Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely;
  9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility;
  10. Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential;
  11. The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams;
  12. At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

With the above values and principles in mind, many organizations adopted the Agile methodology and started to realize that it would make sense to extend this practice to any other projects involving teams. Agile is now spreading rapidly to all parts and all types of organizations.

For more information on the Agile Manifesto, visit http://agilemanifesto.org/

Main characteristics of Agile method:

Agile method focuses on less documents and more productivity.

It’s an interactive and incremental process, that splits the product development in short time frames (interactions) with the goal of delivering all the small parts of the final product.

Each interaction seeks to build, deliver and validate each “small part” of the final product under development.

Focus on communication and customer interaction is key: the customer is kept close to the Agile Team with the purpose of constantly evaluating and validating the “small parts” of the final product. Agile methods believes that communication and customer interaction is more important and efficient than contract negotiations, terms or any other documentation.

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