Importance of Agile Methodology in Software Development

Agile methodology is one of the best choices for developers to the successful completion of project. The term agile means ability to move quickly and easily and responding and responding swiftly to change. This is the key aspect of agile software development. In traditional software development methods like waterfall model will take a long time to complete. Agile projects can have one or more iterations and deliver the complete product at the end of the final iteration. The most popular agile methodologies are Scrum, Crystal, Extreme programming, Lean development etc. Each of the agile methodologies is unique in its specific approach.

This methodology involves continuous planning, testing, integration and other forms of evolution of the project. Each project is broken up into several iterations in the same time duration. At the end of each iteration a working product should be delivered. This will allows the customer to interact and work with functioning software at each successful iteration and provide feedback on it. This approach allows teams to take up changes more easily and make corrections if needed.

Agile methodology is very flexible, adjustable and can adapt to the project needs. The project size is usually small however larger projects can also be handled using this. This methodology will use an incremental development strategy means that each successive version of the product is usable. Agile software development focuses on keeping code simple, testing often and delivering a functional unit as soon as possible. Requirements in Agile model can change as per the customer requirement. Sometimes requirements are not very clear.

Advantages of Agile software development:

· Productive and motivate development team

· Flexibility or Agility

· Predictable cost and time-frame

· Improved quality and transparency

· Business engagement or customer satisfaction

· Easy to manage

· Quickly adapted with changes

· Reliability

· Early and predictable delivery

In Agile model the developers should be knowledgeable, analytically strong, collated and collaborative. Agile projects involve the customer regularly, not just at the beginning and the end. This communication will help the customer to get an improved idea of the emerging product. The agile development can adapt changes easily. This is very important in development field because, at time goes on customer need changes, environment change, organization change and even developers will change.

The iterative and incremental nature of agile will allow any of these sorts of changes effectively. The customer is considered as an agile team because agile projects include the customer in all of the important activities. The customer and the developers collaborate to figure out how to adapt to each change as it is encountered on the project. The developers figure out what it will take to make that happen and the Customer makes sure that they end up with what is needed.

By breaking down a project into some manageable units the developers can focus on developing and testing high quality code. The history behind agile software development is one of frustration with the traditional waterfall methodology. Unlike the Waterfall model, the development team eventually decides at the beginning of a sprint or iteration what can be accomplished in the timeframe. The ultimate goal of each agile method is to get used to modify and bring working software as rapidly as possible.

A typical iteration process includes requirements, development, testing, delivery and feedback. An Agile team will always deliver the product on time and on budget. At the beginning of the project, each requirement is given a rough order of approximation in a team workshop.

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