I didn’t learn about agile until recently when I started working with 9 other people to develop a more functional website for the College of Science at SJSU. So, what is agile? Agile software development is simply a different way of managing IT development teams and projects.
If you have time and money, then feel free to develop software any way you like. Most of the time, it is the case that time or money (usually both) is limited. In this case, using agile development principles and practices can truly be beneficial in developing software in teams. There are numerous benefits to using agile and I would like to primarily focus on two of them: speed-to-market and flexibility/agility.
Speed-to-market
“Research suggests about 80% of all market leaders were first to market” (Kelly) and when you 5 Reasons Why Being Agile is More Important Than Being Perfect by Andy Beal. release quickly and regularly, you get the feedback from intended customers. This can then be used to identify any major flaws or feature requests so that you can tweak the project early on. To find out more about speed-to-market, you can read the article
Flexibility/Agility
With agile, the “timescale is fixed and requirements emerge and evolve as the product is developed” so it is important to have an actively involved stakeholder that can make “necessary trade-off decisions, trading existing scope” (Kelly) for a new one. This flexibility allows us to embrace change where the emphasis is on building the right product. One of the most important things to remember is that “Agile means higher risk of not meeting the initial scope of the project but much lower risk of not meeting the goals for the project” (Palmu).
Overall, agile software development is great to use in order to work in teams. I believe everyone should try Agile at least once to see if it’s a good fit for their team.
Works Cited
Palmu, Vesa. "Why Agile?" Wunderkraut. N.p., 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://wunderkraut.com/blog/why-agile/2012-02-16>.
Waters, Kelly. Allaboutagile. N.p., 11 June 2007. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.allaboutagile.com/10-good-reasons-to-do-agile-development/>.
This was a great post about the introduction and summary for the Agile methodology. I liked that your research included the statistics and that you focused on the agility and flexibility to be thorough. Your post is well researched and understandable readily, and I learned a new way see the Agile methodology. For a negative, it was a little hard to comprehend your "Speed-to-market" section; you might need to review and move around some portion of your sentences.
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