The 7 key pillars of the Agile methodology
- Agile is a methodology that enables companies to adapt quickly and smoothly to changes in the market., and to evolve effectively according to the time and business context.
- Currently, organizations are accelerating the adoption of new profiles, processes, practices and technologies to support changes in product and service delivery.
The origin of the Agile methodology
The Agile methodology was born in the field of software development. In 2001, a score of developers drafted the First Agile Manifesto with the principles underlying the new approach, the most important value of which lies in the capacity to putting the individual at the center of the development process.
Agile's great success is linked to the ability it offers to create perfectly autonomous cross-functional equipment, capable of analyzing the problem from different points of view and quickly developing high-value solutions.
It was at the beginning of the 2000s when the first Agile frameworks and Scrum and Kanban, followed by many others.
Recently, the concept of agility has expanded beyond the scope of product and software development.
The latest edition of the State of Agile Report published by Digital.ai, shows how the adoption of the methodology Agile in the last year has grown significantly, not only in the area of software development (from 37% to 86%) and TI (from 26% to 62%, but also on operations (from 12% to 29%), in marketing (from 7% to 17%) and in sales (from 5% to 11%).
The 7 Agile Pillars
- Key profiles
There are two essential figures in a project managed in Agile mode. The Product Owner, The requirements are usually gathered by a customer contact who formalizes them into functionalities to be implemented and orders them by priority, feeding the product backlog, and the Scrum Master, the facilitator who organizes the team and promotes the exchange of information among its members.
- Dedicated equipment
In the Waterfall approach, often in order to meet deadlines, it is necessary to involve more people, even for short periods of time; who in any case must be adequately trained in the area of implementation.
In the Agile design, the organization based on small and dedicated teams, The quality of the work and the productivity of the people involved in the project are improved.
- Timeboxing
The project is divided into iterations (Sprints) with an average duration of 3-4 weeks. At the beginning of the Sprint, the team identifies the list of features to be implemented, moving them away from the product stack (Product Backlog) in order of importance, and the necessary activities are planned.
Every day, the people involved in the project are scheduled to have a very short meeting, generally of 15 minutes, The progress and problems are also discussed.
- Frequent deliveries
The Waterfall methodology is based on a sequence of macro-releases, so it is not possible to move to the next phase without having completed the previous one.
Agile projects are characterized by frequent releases of intermediate versions of the software.
This avoids the risk of delays in the delivery of the project and the quality tests are more frequent, analyzing deficiencies and detecting anomalies that the team can easily resolve in the next release.
The success rate of a project managed with the Agile methodology is almost double (42%) compared to initiatives managed with the Waterfall methodology (26%). - Chaos Report 2019 - Standish Group
An increasing number of companies and systems integrators are adopting the Agile Scrum methodology for your digital transformation. Scrum also works on the basis of Sprints with defined times. However, this methodology is more concrete when it comes to structuring them. The Sprints are divided into different stages: analysis, development and testing.
- Direct customer involvement
Continuous interaction of the customer with the equipment is ensured by software tools such as Jira, Azure DevOps or Trello that allow you to manage the entire workflow, tasks, times and any problem in real time and in an automated way.
- Ability to change targets and «on-going» technologies»
In today's highly dynamic and constantly evolving business environment, it would be unthinkable to manage IT projects by holding on to initial assumptions for the entire duration of the project.
Technological evolution leads to continuous improvements and introduces new features that can be immediately exploited in projects.
The iterative approach of Agile allows you to change your mind during the project and adjust decision making, The new objectives may initially be supported by technologies and applications that had not been contemplated.
- Focus on business needs
The iteration cycle ends with the Sprint Review, which is the verification of the actual achievement of Sprint objectives.
The Retrospective is another core moment of the Agile methodology. At regular intervals, the team discusses and lessons learned will serve to drive the next steps even more effectively, to ensure that the implemented functionality meets identified business needs and quality requirements.
At Zemsania Global Group our partners and consultants are up to date in the use of Agile methodologies and IT tools that allow us to manage in an integral way: the planning, documentation, testing and launching of any ICT project successfully.