Understanding what’s to like and what’s to be careful of in the modern tech development world.
If you are not familiar with the terms ‘iterative’, ‘scrums’, ‘sprints’ and ‘agile’ in the world of technology development, and more specifically software development, then you will become familiar with them quickly as you talk to your development teams or development partners.
This post is not a tutorial on the Agile methodology – there are plenty of places you can find that with a quick search. This post will discuss how you can approach todays more prevalent development methodology with common sense
The agile manifesto is very simple you can read it in three minutes: https://agilemanifesto.org
From this basis have grown various agile frameworks and methodologies, which most web, mobile and cloud technology companies use in one form or another at this time.
Some key ideas
- Incremental and iterative development – development happens in short ‘sprints’ or increments and at the end of each increment and iteration there should be something usable. It will start very basic and rough and each increment or iteration will be refined and have more functionality added to it. The idea is that the end user or customer can get a very early feel for the product and feed back changes as early as possible, ensuring the final product is as close to their real needs as possible.
- Teams and scrums – most agile development is focused around tasks that a small team can complete in short 1-4 week iterations. The term scrum encompasses a team and a method of working, focusing on collaboration and communication rather than hierarchy and assignments.
- User stories – a way of capturing the users requirements in a structured ‘story’ like style.
Is this better or worse than previous or competing development methodologies?
Ultimately, it is the people that matter. There is a saying that Venture Capitalists invest in teams rather than in ideas.
Technology development is really quite similar – a good team using a bad methodology will usually produce a better solution than a bad team using the best methodology.
So if possible become familiar with the people and the track record of the team you are considering for your work as a first priority.