What is different about Agile Methodology?
Posted on February 1, 2010
Filed Under Program Management | Leave a Comment
What is different about Agile Methodology?
Agile Project Management methodology can be implemented along with few traditional project management methodologies are Waterfall model, Iterative and Incremental Development, Short iterations, Progress measured via completed features, Open flexible design, empowered teams, Personal communications. This combination will be managing the impact of the change in a project more effectively; change to be introduced to the project in an orderly way to maximize the benefits to the stakeholders by reducing risk of change management.
Waterfall Development
In traditional waterfall method, the base was the design developed for the product and then product is developed according to that design, which is tested to check how much it adhere to the design. If this process takes 18 months, the stakeholder have to means to measure the progress of the product until he gets access to the product for acceptance review. With agile method, you can focus on user-visible features. If the product have 10 user-visible features, out of which if 4 is completed and working, your stakeholder can easily measure that 40% of product development is completed.
Iterative and Incremental Development
Agile methods break the product development into number of repetitive cycles called iterations. Each iteration builds new layer of the functionality or adding up the older one. Initially product development is started with the core functionality, day by day product get more mature and becoming more towards completing stage.
Short Iterations
Agile methods with short iteration keeps the feedback cycle short, allowing more response to the product and thereby reducing the risk of building up wrong product.
Progress measured with completed features
Agile method keeps track progress by fully-completed and tested features. This is nice approach instead of keeping progress by measuring percent complete on intangible elements such as design. Progress is measured by the percent of features that are complete and ready for the stakeholders to review or deploy.
Open, Flexible Design
Most of the time full set of requirements may be unclear at the beginning of the project. It is likely to change anytime in the project life cycle. With agile prepare a flexible, extensible design that will allow you to add on features to support new requirements as they emerge. There is always the risk of some rework to incorporate complex requirements, but often the impact is offset by the other benefits gained by using agile methods.
Empowered Teams
Instead of imposing the design on the team, a team is framed who know their jobs well and have experience to decide for them. This often allows for more flexibility in a system unlike found in the traditional centralized design.
Personal Communications
Agile methods focus on teams working in shared physical environments instead of focusing on producing written documents to communicate every minor aspect of product development. Whiteboards is much efficient ways for working out design details. This method is quite updated and easily communicated within and outside the product development team.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
