by Russell Sherwood - David Sale for
In Europython 2012 the term ‘Agile Movement’ was heard during a keynote, suggesting that the agile development process was a waste of time. This talk looks to offer our view and experiences on why you need to be following this process now. This isn’t some cult idea, nor is it going to make your development team the best in the world. What Agile can bring is a more structured, stable delivery stream to your business or project, along with happy, empowered developers.
Whenever you’re developing for a client there’s always one thing that’s inevitable: the requirements that you think you’re agreeing on at the start are never the same as what the client has in mind: either the product that you produce is different to what the client expects, or you find that halfway through development the client changes their mind.
But where does this fit in to the waterfall model? At what point do we consider that the client could change their mind?
“I’ve already gathered my requirements, nailed down my design and begun implementation, how dare the client come back to me and change the goalposts!” – A waterfall developer
Let’s not forget: they’re your client, and they’re paying you. We want to please them so that they come back to us. Telling a client that we can’t be flexible with what they ask is not going to leave them very happy.
This is where agile development steps in. With agile, we lose the rigid structure of the waterfall model. We know that requirements can change all the time, and that’s just fine: there’s no longer a need to smile and nod with gritted teeth.
With waterfall the fixed aspect are the requirements. We know that we must deliver X, Y and Z, but the time that this will take is estimated. With agile, this is flipped in to a more realistic model, where the time taken is fixed but the quantity of features delivered is estimated.
Sound odd? It really works, and many software companies are noticing the benefits and migrating. Are you ready to make the move? This is an introduction to agile for beginners that will make you question the way your waterfall team works and will give you a few small ideas that can be implemented immediately.
We will give you a brief overview on the key points to give you a taster of what life is like in an agile development team:
