Agile allows new generations of software developers to get flexible and adaptive to changes in planning and engineering, and during product improvement. How can Agile do so? Let’s learn about Agile software development at a glance.
1. What is Agile software development?
Agile software development is a work mindset that focuses on three basic things:
Firstly, it emphasizes on lean culture that encourages continuous software improvement.
Secondly, it employs lightweight methodologies that elaborate on self-organizing and cross-functional teams.
Finally, because customer needs are at the center of Agile, it shifts software engineers from traditional project-based mindset to product-based one.
Therefore, Agile allows new generations of software developers to get flexible and adaptive to changes in planning and engineering, and during product improvement. In addition, it enables frequent product deliveries at minimum costs, time, and waste to increase product quality and customer satisfaction.
2. Agile methodologies and frameworks
When we speak of Agile methodologies, we speak of a way of working that entails a range of widely-adopted lightweight frameworks and methods. Not surprisingly, they include more than 40 Agile methods (see below). The most popular are Scrum, XP, Crystal, among others, whose inventions dated from the early 1940s to the 1990s even before the term “Agile” was coined.
Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP)
According to the father of Scrum Jeff Sutherland, January of the year 2019 marks the 25th anniversary of the first Scrum team in operation. In fact, Scrum was introduced by Jeff and his fellow Ken Schwaber to the OOPSLA Conference audience in 1995. One year later, Extreme Programming (famously known as XP) was also invented and “mushroomed in use and interest” soon after, according to one of the agile founders Jim Highsmith (2001).
>> Read A Beginner’s Guide to Agile Scrum for Software Development Teams to learn more.
Kanban
In the case of Kanban, it originated from the Toyota Production System (TPS) method. It was also known by the name just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing, later lean manufacturing. In fact, the method was invented in the late 1940s – early 1950s by Toyota’s Taiichi Ohno as an answer for his urge to stay ahead of the fierce competition at that time. Later, software industry adopted this waste-eliminating, time-saving method in the software production cycles and observed equivalent successes. During this period, PDCA was also adopted by Toyota and other like-minded companies. Short for plan – do – check – act, or plan – do – check – adjust, it enables corporations to build workforces that had critical-thinking, highly-innovative, problem-solving skills. These skills have been vital for companies to adapt to changeable contexts and secure the market leaders’ status quo.
>>> Read Kanban basics from A-Z in IT outsourcing to learn more.
3. History of Agile software development
Context
As the world had become more and more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), the traditional approaches from the Taylorism time (industrial age) – like waterfall, which focused on machine processes and standardized processes were quickly falling off. Indeed, they failed at dealing with today’s increasingly complex problems, unpredictable requirements, and challenging impediments that inevitably occur. Meanwhile, some of the best lightweight frameworks and methods which were invented based on the empirical process, such as Scrum. had demonstrated to be progressively capable of tackling these issues in a much effective manner.
The birth of “Agile”
Burning with curiosity, 17 respectable software engineers had brought this observation to the table in a sit-down in Utah (USA) in 2001. In search of what makes these lightweight methodologies and frameworks amazingly effective compared to the traditional ways of working, they found some of the best values that are shared between Scrum, XP, DSDM, Crystal, among others, to be “Agile”. This was when the term “Agile” was coined and the Manifesto for Agile Software development was drafted and introduced to the world, allowing the software industry to take the revolutionary shape as we see it today.
The focus of Agile Manifesto
According to agilemanifesto.org, the Manifesto reflects “better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it” by putting more focus on individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change. Meanwhile, it minimizes the use of “processes and tools”, “comprehensive documentation”, “contract negotiation” and “following a plan”, in order to maximize the Agile effects.
5. What makes Agile worthwhile
Twelve Agile principles
The successful applications of Agile in both formal and informal contexts can be attributed to the 12 underpinning “backbone” principles created by the founders of Agile software development. These 12 principles focus on:
Clients’ satisfaction
Flexible adaption to changeable requirements
Short time to market
Daily communication between clients and development teams
Developers who feel trusted and supported
Face-to-face conversation among development team members
Working software as the primary measure
Sustainable development
Continuous attention to technical and design details
Simplicity
Self-organizing teams
Reflection and adjustment of the team
Reasons for using Agile
Because of the above principles, Agile practitioners the world over have recognized several top convincing reasons for using Agile as announced in the latest 12th annual State of Agile Report 2018, including:
Accelerate software delivery – 75%
Manage changing priorities – 64%
Increase productivity – 55%
Better Business/IT alignment – 49%
Increased software quality – 46%
Benefits of Agile working methodologies at Axon Active
Major benefits
As a successful software outsourcing company in Vietnam for clients based in the US and Europe, Axon Active has observed numerous benefits generated by Agile software development, such as:
Increased team satisfaction
Enhanced team productivity
Better product quality
Rapid response to changes
Complete transparency for both clients and outsourcing teams
Financial benefits such as increased sales reduced support costs, limited/no negative publicity, and increased customer satisfaction.
Other benefits
Along with these benefits, Axon Active’s embodiment of agile frameworks and practices through its software development processes has enabled it to maximize other important effects of software outsourcing services for clients on the other side of the globe. Some of these effects are:
higher flexibility
easy scalability
software outsourcing team’s absolute concentration
client’s full control over the team
shorter time-to-market
6. Agile-DevOps synergy
Due to the fact that Agile effectiveness is inversely proportional to the scale of projects and organizational contexts, many Agile practitioners are adopting DevOps. It is another software development mindset that takes Agile a step further. To do that, it joins software development team to IT operation team into cross-functional squads. These squads are tasked to handle full life-cycle of projects instead of different discrete phases traditionally. As a result, it enables automated testing, deployment, and monitoring and applying the same process for all deployment.
For that reason, Agile-DevOps combination at Axon Active makes it possible to save time and cost and increase agility, quality, and efficiency during software development processes.
A documented trend among world’s tech giants
In the 2018 VersionOne State of Agile report, a consistent 71% of the majority of Agile practitioners surveyed are currently applying DevOps or planning to use DevOps in the next 12 months. It is because DevOps allows them to deliver outputs faster and more efficiently in such scenarios.
What’s more, in 2018, successful adoption of DevOps-Agile movements was observed in big corporations such as Amazon, Netflix, Target, Walmart, Facebook, Adobe, or Sony Pictures Entertainment. Following this trend, Axon Active is also using DevOps in software development services.
7. Agile trends for 2019-2020
We believe by bringing about obvious benefits for both software outsourcing teams and clients, Agile software development will become an even more common practice for a growing number of IT professionals. DevOps adoption will also be a notable trend among Agile practitioners in 2019-2020 due to the soaring demand for applying Agile software development methodologies into projects and organizations of larger scales in years to come.
We are the offshore partner you’re looking for
Looking for a well-versed, reliable offshore agile software outsourcing partner? Axon Active has years of experience in developing agile software and applications for web and mobile platforms. We are the only organization in Vietnam that provides official Scrum Alliance’s Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner certifications. Besides that, the exclusive Scrum and Agile coaching has enabled distinguished clients such as Soreco (Switzerland), CRIF (Switzerland), Metabiota (USA), H&L (Australia), among others, to successfully adopt agile and observe major agile transformation over the years.
Mr. Lee Atkins, Chief Innovation Officer of H&L Australia, one of the partners we’ve been working with for many years, said: “It’s been a really good engine for the execution of our development projects.
We’ve proven that the productivity of offshoring our development is a beneficial one and one that we want to continue.”
Learn more about how to start software development outsourcing and let us know how we can help you do the same!
References
Agile Alliance. (n.d.). Agile Practices Timeline. Agile Alliance
Andrew Agerbak & Benjamin Rehberg (n.d.). DevOps Takes Agile Further—and Across the Software Life Cycle. BCG
Bruce Feiler. (2013, February). Agile programming – for your family. TED Talk
Christopher Null. (2015, September 25). 10 companies killing it at DevOps. TechBeacon
Isaac Sacolick. (2018, March 15). What is agile methodology? Modern software development explained. InfoWorld Magazine from IDG
Jeroen Kraaijenbrink. (2018). What does VUCA really mean. Forbes
Narayanamurthi. (2017, January 31). Top 5 Industries That Are Adopting Agile Other Than Software. Agile Seeds
Simon Buehring. (2018, Dec 06 ). The Agile Manifesto: An illustrated guide. Knowledge Train
Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland. (2017). Scrum Guide – The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game. Retrieved from scrumguide.org
Vandersluis, C. (2014, October 26). Apply agile methodology to non-software enterprise projects. Project Management Institute
VersionOne CollabNet. (2016, December 13). 10th Annual State of Agile Report. VersionOne
VersionOne CollabNet. (2017, April 6). 11th Annual State of Agile Report. VersionOne
VersionOne CollabNet. (2018, April 9). 12th Annual State of Agile Report. VersionOne
Ward Cunningham et al. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Agile Manifesto
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Agile software development. Wikipedia
Wikipedia. (n.d.). PDCA. Wikipedia
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Lean manufacturing. Wikipedia