Agile Software Development at a glance: Why Agile?
Transparency at all time
Using Agile frameworkds such as Scrum allow organizations to benefit from full transparency of their teams and their progress. Scrum meetings allow the organization to receive feedback regarding the quality of the work done. Scrum artifacts such as burn-down charts and product backlogs provide a clear view of the completed work and what is yet to be delivered. Another aspect of project control is the use of more relevant and accurate metrics to estimate time and cost, evaluate project performance and determine the quality of each delivery.
The Increase of Quality
Using agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, etc) and technical practices (TDD, Refactoring, CI, etc) we can reduce the number of defects, bugs, and customer issues from the field. Also, we can easily reduce manual testing by using TDD and Efficient CI/CD practices, technical teams can reduce dramatically the time it takes to test new and refactored code prior to releasing it to the field.
Focusing on creation
As In Agile, everyone in the organization can experience the excitement of working and collaborating in a true team that focuses its efforts on delivering the best value both for the business and the customers.
Self-Organization Increases Team Morale
As Agile projects are based on self-organized teams that allow each team member to contribute equally. Being part of such a working environment allows people the confidence to be creative, innovative and share their knowledge. In addition, cross-functional teams allow team members to keep acquiring new skills, tools, and technologies that aid their own personal development.
Efficient Risk Reduction
Agile frameworks deliver rapid releases starting from the very first sprint, so there is less chance of complete project failure. Rapid releases ensure a short time frame between the initial project investment and knowing if the product works.
Predictable Deliverables
By using specific time-boxes for the development cycles and their respective activities, the team can deliver incremental releases quickly and frequently, increasing business value and ROI. Time-boxing in Agile development also allows the business to predict costs and timelines of each sprint by maintaining team allocation and sprint length throughout the project.