Find out what is an Agile Software Development Company and how the methodology can improve your digital product creation.
evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, and encourages rapid and flexible responses to change. With this article, we take a closer look at the Agile methodology and examine why is it suitable to choose an agile software development company for your project.
How Does The Process of Agile Project Development Work?
The Agile process involves iterative work in "sprints," where each round of iteration becomes a separate mini-project. You gain continuous learning and control at every step through simplified phases of planning, delivery, testing, and deployment.
The success of this method lies not only in the shorter iterations, but also in the level of team collaboration that’s hard to find in traditional methodologies.
As the customer demand increases, companies are pushed to develop new products faster and faster. If processes, procedures, and documentation slow down time-to-market, it will cost the company its competitive advantage and customers.
Agile software development helps to address this issue by focusing on customer needs.It places more emphasis on working software rather than comprehensive documentation and emphasizes stakeholder engagement, customer collaboration, and transparency over process.
The Most Popular Agile Development Frameworks
Scrum Methodology
Scrum project management is a popular framework for managing software development projects. It’s based on the Agile methodology and uses short sprints to complete project tasks. The Scrum framework is designed to be flexible and adaptable to changing project requirements and is popular among software developers for its simplicity and efficiency.
Using Scrum is justified when introducing a new product or set of features in existing products. Scrum can help manage potential risks associated with the scope of specific features, technical solutions, or user experience.
Kanban Methodology
Kanban is an efficient way to manage product development by using a visual workflow. This methodology helps you deliver products continuously without overburdening your development team.
We suggest using Kanban when you need to give technical support or keep up an existing product, or when you have to deal with unknown technical issues that can't be estimated beforehand (like experimenting with data or repairing a legacy system).
Extreme Programming (XP)
Extreme Programming was designed for small, interdisciplinary teams working on projects with a high likelihood of requirements change. XP can help improve productivity, software quality, and team collaboration.
XP is a good solution for your project when you need custom products that are built from the ground up and are easy to maintain over the long term, or when you want to revitalize legacy systems for better performance.
Lean Software Development
Lean Software Development methodology is all about building an MVP and effectively finding product-market fit. You should consider Lean if you’re not sure what business value your users will be willing to pay for, or if you don't have a product-market fit just yet. The Lean approach can be adapted using Scrum or Kanban, depending on your specific business needs.
The Top 5 Reasons for Choosing Agile Software Development
Limiting technical debt
Using Agile software development during development helps reduce technical debt. All defects, feature changes, and other maintenance tasks are added to what is known as the product backlog. The team reviews this backlog during each sprint-planning session to determine what needs to be addressed next.
Higher product quality
In an Agile project, the team doesn’t try to develop all functionalities at once. Instead, the team assigns a smaller subset of features to each sprint. That gives the developers more time to work on these features and make sure they’re perfect before release.
Agile also relies on continuous integration, which links all working copies used by developers to a common repository several times a day. That gives developers a chance to test issues daily and fix them immediately. Working on the product in small, incremental releases ensures that each sprint ends with a fully tested and working product.
The ability to quickly and easily adjust to changes
Instead of just adapting to change, Agile also invites teams to be proactive in adopting this practice. These are in part because Agile recognizes that customer needs are constantly changing and that teams need to be able to adapt to address those needs.
How does it look in practice? According to Agile methodology, the team won’t have to wait for extensive requirement changes, review, and approval. Each change or maintenance item will be added to the backlog and assigned to a future sprint based on priority and business needs.
Improved stakeholder engagement
The success of Agile software development hinges on the product owner's engagement throughout the process. This level of involvement fosters a sense of ownership that, in turn, spurs further engagement.
More efficient project control
Agile software development is a process that helps teams deliver a working product that provides value at the end of each sprint. Being open to change is one of the core tenets of the process. With agile software development, teams can quickly adapt to changes in requirements without negatively impacting release dates. Additionally, Agile can help lower technical debt, improve customer satisfaction, and deliver a higher quality product.
In Short: Why You Should Go For Agile
Cutting to the chase, Agile models of software development are a modern-day way of getting products done faster, more efficiently, and with higher quality. A deep level of team collaboration and a selection of trusted methods that support it translate to great results, like efficient project control, improved stakeholder engagement, and quick changes.
Agile can be adapted to your project via different methodologies, with Scrum, Kanban, XP, and Lean being the most popular ones.Contact Score Digital experts today to learn how we can help you in your software development project.
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