Agile Methodology

Agile Software Development

“Agile Development” is an umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. Agile development, in its simplest form, offers a lightweight framework for helping teams, given a constantly evolving functional and technical landscape, maintain a focus on the rapid delivery of business value. As a result of this focus and its associated benefits, organizations are capable of significantly reducing the overall risk associated with software development. By using Agile Software Methodology, you see the cost and time benefits more pronounced in longer projects than in short ones and also help us to deliver projects with very short time frames. By delivering working, tested, deployable software on an incremental basis, agile development delivers increased value, visibility, and adaptability much earlier in the life cycle, significantly reducing project risk. Samprasoft uses Agile Development methodology for its mobile application development and custom software development.

Revenue

The iterative nature of agile development means features are delivered incrementally, enabling some benefits to be realized early as the product continues to develop.

Speed-to-market

Research suggests about 80% of all market leaders were first to market. As well as the higher revenue from incremental delivery, agile development philosophy also supports the notion of early and regular releases, and ‘perpetual beta’.

Quality

A key principle of agile development is that testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle, enabling regular inspection of the working product as it develops. This allows the product owner to make adjustments if necessary and gives the product team early sight of any quality issues.

  1. Visibility

Agile development principles encourage active ‘user’ involvement throughout the product’s development and a very cooperative collaborative approach. This provides excellent visibility for key stakeholders, both of the project’s progress and of the product itself.

Risk Management

Small incremental releases made visible to the product owner and product team through its development help to identify any issues early and make it easier to respond to change. The clear visibility in agile development helps to ensure that any necessary decisions can be taken at the earliest possible opportunity, while there’s still time to make a material difference to the outcome.

Flexibility / Agility

In traditional development projects, we write a big spec up-front and then tell business owners how expensive it is to change anything, particularly as the project goes on. In fear of scope creep and a never-ending project, we resist changes and put people through a change control committee to keep them to the essential minimum. Agile development principles are different. In agile development, change is accepted. In fact, it’s expected. 

Customer Satisfaction

The active involvement of a user representative and/or product owner, the high visibility of the product and progress, and the flexibility to change when change is needed, create much better business engagement and customer satisfaction. This is an important benefit that can create much more positive and enduring working relationships.

Right Product

Above all other points, the ability for agile development requirements to emerge and evolve, and the ability to embrace change (with the appropriate trade-offs), the team build the right product. It’s all too common in more traditional projects to deliver a “successful” project in IT terms and find that the product is not what was expected, needed or hoped for. In agile development, the emphasis is absolutely on building the right product.