What is Agile Methodology in Mobile App Development

The term agile means to move quickly and to rapidly adapt to changes in a fast-paced environment. In the world of mobile app development, agile is a method of project management where tasks are divided into short phases of work followed by reassessment of plans.

Agile methodology emphasizes continuous iteration through simultaneous development and testing. This is done throughout the project development lifecycle.

Before we delve too deep into the world of agile, list out its benefits and detail the agile process, here’s an example that goes beyond the buzzword and perfectly captures the agile approach to project management.

Let’s suppose, in your locality, there is no bakery that caters to weddings. You are a baker who sees the potential and is eager to start your new project.

You also get an order for a wedding cake. How do you proceed?

It is your customer’s big day after all and in no way, you want to spoil it. With big fat weddings doing the rounds, customers tend to get particularly specific regarding the details.You need to ensure your customer is happy and gets the wedding cake that they have dreamt of.

If you go step by step in making a three or four-tier cake you will first gather the ingredients, then make a base, choose a filling and finally top it off with some icing. The entire process is not only tedious but more often than not, customers are not satisfied with the very first cake. They tend to ask for certain customizations.

So what now, will you throw away the entire cake and start from scratch?

Here’s how agile methodology comes into the picture:

To ensure you deliver the perfect wedding cake, Begin with a Cupcake. Start by baking a cupcake for your customer, ask them what frosting they like, add on various sprinkles to see which looks more aesthetic and choose a cake mix that they want.

Here we breakdown the entire project into multiple tasks, the first- making a cupcake. We test it, garner valuable feedback from the customer and complete the entire project, i.e. The wedding cake, layer by layer after being sure of the choice of cake mix, frosting, and sprinkles, etc.

Through this approach not only your customers will be involved in the entire process, their likes and preferences are given due importance. It generates faster feedback, the cost is low and ensures that the end result is truly appreciated.

What exactly is Agile?

Agile isn’t a set of rules. It is not just some guidelines or principles. Agile is a state of mind.

In this whirlwind change of digital revolution and rapidly changing environment, the need of the hour is to move at the speed of digital. And how do we do that?

By having an agile state of mind.

Innovation is done through rapid prototyping, trial and error, and iterative development.

Being agile implies being flexible, adaptable and communicative. It ensures you deliver projects before the time ticks and the end result is something that is truly needed. Through the agile way, complex projects can be handled with much ease. When teams follow the agile approach, they work more efficiently and effectively. Iterative and incremental practices display incredible results.

Having an agile mindset brings great value to the business and that is why many organizations are revisiting their vision and mission and redefining their business models to stay current and meet high demands.

Agile methodology has some core principles:

• It focusses on team interactions and collaborative work over processes and tools.
• It emphasizes on having a tangible working software instead of heavy comprehensive documentation.
• It facilitates customer collaboration and values feedback.
• Due to concurrent development and testing, responding and adapting to change becomes easy.

Most software and app development companies trust agile methodology to ensure optimum utilization of time and effort.

Agile is an incremental and iterative mobile app development approach. It emphasizes on constant communication between the client and the company. The requirements and solutions evolve through the combined collaboration between cross-functional teams. Agile is the right approach to handle complex projects where customers’ requirements change quite frequently. It is highly flexible and is considered the best alternative to the classical project management method, Waterfall.

In agile, the project is broken down into smaller builds. The entire app development cycle is divided into multiple smaller modules that are called mini-projects. Each module is assigned to a team which reviews the cycle right from design till the delivery of the application.

Before evaluating why Agile is the perfect approach for project management, let’s take a look at what is Waterfall Methodology.

What is Waterfall Methodology?

Waterfall methodology follows a straight-line approach. The requirements are predefined in the start, followed by extensive planning and a well-defined project outcome. It eliminates any scope for negotiation or communication when the project is in the development pipeline.

Testing is the last step of the development lifecycle. Only after getting an end product testing is conducted and the scope of improvement is evaluated.

The waterfall process follows a sequence and only after one step is achieved, one can move past it. A developer can not go back to a previous step and make changes simultaneously.

Waterfall Vs Agile

Waterfall and agile are two different models with entirely different approaches. But in order to decide which is the right mobile development approach, you need to carefully understand the nuances.

Advantages of being agile

There are numerous challenges and limitations with traditional waterfall development. Whereas, agile guarantees a more efficient process. The benefits of agile development are as follows:

A. Stakeholder Satisfaction

Agile provides numerous opportunities for genuine engagement between the cross-functional team and the stakeholders. The client gets regular insight into the project process and progress, at the end of each iteration. Since there is continuous collaboration between the team and the client, it becomes easy to understand the client’s vision and deliver high-quality requirement based solutions.

B. Transparency and involvement

The agile methodology actively involves the client in the project development process right from discovery to deployment. Be it planning, review, design or developing a new functionality, there is total transparency and involvement at all levels.

C. Welcomes Change

The multidisciplinary team is highly adaptive and nimble. They accommodate the changing requirements even in the later stages of development.

D. Ensures project launches timely

After each sprint, the client is provided with a working software. It should meet the definition of done as specified by the stakeholder. When the project is divided into tasks that are boxed into 1 to 4-week duration called Sprint, releasing the project in the given deadline becomes all the more easy because there is always a track of time.

E. Good flow of communication

There is constant two-way communication between the stakeholders, client and the multidisciplinary team at all levels. Requirements and changes are easily negotiated and accommodated. Besides a good flow of communication, it also ensures teamwork and collaboration.

F. Quality testing at every step

Since the project is broken down into multiple units, it facilitates faster problem-solving. The team lays due emphasis on stellar design, high- quality development and quality testing is done at every step. In agile driven mobile app development, regular reviews are conducted and defects and bugs are identified early. They are also fixed timely, thereby improving the quality of the product.

What is Scrum?

Scrum is a popular and widely used agile framework. Often considered synonymous to agile, scrum is a development method on how to implement agile.

The word scrum traces its origin from rugby sport. It emphasizes on how to successfully manage and collaborate in a team-based environment. In rugby, each player has a defined role and they play together in an interlocked position. The idea lies in empowering cross-functional teams to collaborate, organize tasks and accomplish the end goals.

The roles include-

• Product Owner- The product owner creates a product backlog which is a to-do list of work that needs to be accomplished by the team. The Product Owner is also responsible for delivering functionality at the end of each iteration.
• Scrum Master- The Scrum Master is responsible for managing the team, conducting sprint meetings and eliminating any obstacles that hinder progress.
• Scrum Team- The scrum team works together in time-boxed durations ranging from a week to four, called Sprint.

How to Scrum?

Step 1: Creating User Stories

The Sprint commences with creating User stories. A User story outlines requirements in the simplest form possible. User stories are drafted in a conversational format capturing the desired functionality. It helps a great deal in prioritizing requirements that can be coded and tested in one iteration.

Step 2: Product Backlog

After mapping user stories, Product Backlog is created. A Product Backlog is a prioritized list of work that the Scrum team has to accomplish. All the tasks right from user stories, bugs, design changes, client requests to action items are included in a backlog. A product backlog is created to define the amount of work for a project.

Step 3: Sprint Planning

During the sprint, multidisciplinary teams conduct Sprint planning meetings where they select a number of product backlog items mostly in the form of user stories and break it down into tasks necessary to complete each user story.

Step 4: Creating a Sprint Backlog

After conducting the Sprint meeting, a Sprint Backlog is created. Sprint Backlog is a subset of Product Backlog. It is a list of tasks identified by the Scrum team to be completed in a given sprint.

You should strategically create an effective Sprint backlog that breaks down the amount of work into achievable tasks and outlines the steps on how to achieve it.

Step 5: Backlog Refinement

After working on the assigned Sprint Backlog, a Backlog refinement session is conducted. It is an ongoing process. It is considered ideal to regularly review the backlog to ensure the right stories are prioritized and stories that are not relevant are duly removed.

Since agile is about building a product incrementally, you must evaluate the Backlog to reassess the priority of stories and create new stories as per newly discovered needs.

Step 6: Daily Stand-up meetings

In a Sprint, daily stand-up meetings are conducted to ensure the development process is efficient and productive. 15 minutes on a daily basis are dedicated to Stand-ups to review accomplishments, set the goal for future tasks and discuss impediments. It keeps the development team on track and facilitates coordination.

Step 7: Shippable Product release and Client Demo

By the end of a sprint, you arrive at a potentially shippable product increment. It comprises all the Product Backlog items that are accomplished in a Sprint. A shippable product release implies that the output generated at the end of the Sprint is so ‘done’ that it is potentially shippable.

This is followed by a Sprint review for the client. It keeps the client up-to-date with the development progress. The client’s feedback is duly taken into consideration and the current state of Product Backlog is evaluated to generate more value.

Step 8: Retrospective Meetings

Agile means incorporating feedback to add more value. Retrospective meetings help us analyze what worked and what did not. Focus on the areas that worked for you and find solutions to counter challenges that did not. Restropecting is a great way to highlight problem areas and turn challenges into opportunities.

Conclusion:

Agile is a widely used and fascinating approach to project management and the agile scrum methodology makes mobile app development efficient.

Continuous collaboration between multidisciplinary teams and stakeholders throughout the development process helps in accomplishing the desired results. It truly is a rewarding process.