Improving your Software Development With Agile Methods

The software development industry has a poor track record of producing successful projects. Studies have shown that the majority of software projects fail in some way - they run over time and/or budget, are lacking features, do not do what the users want, or are cancelled after millions of dollars have been spent on them. The traditional way of trying to solve these problems has been to impose a rigorous development process or methodology on the development team. These split the project into distinct phases, each one of which must be completed before the next one starts. These methodologies specify in detail the documents and other 'artifacts' that the developers must produce before they can proceed to the next stage. The methodologies often went hand in hand with a specific design notation and CASE tool, with the tool vendors selling the methodology as well as the tools.

But still the projects kept failing. Projects run using heavyweight methodologies often spend more effort producing documents and diagrams than they do writing code, slowing down development. Even worse, the process makes it increasingly expensive to change the software once it has been written, so the end result is often a program that works, but does not do what the users want or need.

In the late 1990s a new breed of development processes were created. Many people around the world realised that the heavyweight methodologies were not delivering what they promised and worked independently to create new ways of developing software. These processes focused on getting people working together rather than communicating though documents, on producing working code rather than documents, and on evolving the product over time rather than designing everything up front. Then in February 2001 the key players from this new movement got together in Snowbird, Utah to find out what they had in common, and what their differences were. From this the Agile Manifesto was born.

The Agile Manifesto states:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

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

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Adapting agile development methods can greatly improve your productivity. There are now many thousands of people around the world using agile development methods, and although it is not a panacea for all development problems, many teams have had remarkable improvements in productivity. Teams using agile methods have also reported higher levels of job satisfaction and enjoyment. To find out more about agile methods and how they can be used to improve productivity, email agile@thedeveloperscoach.com.