Agile is not just a buzzword; it’s a mindset bringing people and processes together by finding the most efficient way to deliver a task. When fully understood and implemented, it becomes a way of life. 

In the world of technology, agile becomes an art of iterative and incremental development, primarily used for software development in project management process to deliver complex projects. During this process demands and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams and their customers. 

What is Agile methodology?

At its core, Agile is a collection of principles that value adaptability and flexibility aiming to provide better responsiveness to changing business needs and therefore focuses on enabling teams to deliver in workable increments towards the big picture. 

It is a common saying in software development ‘If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late’ with this in mind agile gives us an opportunity not to miss our window to capture the market as we continue to improve and add value to our products lead by the customers feedback and insights. 

This methodology came about as a response to the inadequacies of traditional development methods, such as the Waterfall method, which breaks down project activities into linear sequential phases. Each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialisation of tasks which tends to be less iterative and flexible as progress flows in largely one direction and best fit for building construction projects. 

Whichever agile methodology you end up settling on you will find yourself being guided by 4 values and 12 principles as following; 

Values 

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

Principles 

  • Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery  
  • Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process 
  • Frequent delivery of working software 
  • Collaboration between the business stakeholders and developers throughout the project 
  • Support, trust, and motivate the people involved 
  • Enable face-to-face interactions 
  • Working software is the primary measure of progress 
  • Agile processes to support a consistent development pace 
  • Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility 
  • Simplicity 
  • Self-organizing teams encourage great architectures, requirements, and designs 
  • Regular reflections on how to become more effective. 

Though agile techniques may be used in the technology world to better manage software development, some popular agile concepts are being used to help bring order, lower stress, and accomplish tasks in daily life. By applying agile in our daily lives, we therefore not only use it as a project management tool but also as a way of life. 

With all the awesome benefits that come with agile, it’s not an off-the-shelf type of process, for a project or team to fully enjoy the benefits it needs to be customizable to fit the type of project or team they are in. A team needs to break down the issues they want to resolve, then use available agile tools and methodologies to enable them to meet their desired goal ‘even a perfect fitting outfit can only be customized’. 

At FITTS, we always work towards delivering projects and products in a smooth manner where all stakeholder’s input is put into consideration and the end product is exactly what was desired. Agile brings us closer to that by helping us break it down into iterations and giving us visibility of every milestone. Talk to our team of experts today for a free consultation to discuss your project’s requirements and unlock it’s full potential.