Agile development is a dynamic process of software development techniques that focus on the software development life cycle. The software planning and estimation activities are not done only at the beginning of the software project, but also throughout the life cycle of software development.
Agile Development Overview
Agile development is a dynamic planning process. When adopting the agile development concepts and framework, software developers need to understand that the agile development is a multiple planning process. Compared with the traditional software development that get thorough analysis and planning beforehand, agile development conducts just enough up-front planning to get the project started. From that point forward, planning is done at various levels as frequently as every day. The essence of agile development is to focus more expecting and embracing change than in creating derailed plans to deal with or control change.
Agile development can support effective planning. In contrast to the misunderstanding that the agile development can not provide accurate project schedule, Agile development can in fact support organizational planning more effectively. At the beginning, agile development can not give a accurate project schedule, however, software developer knows that there are inherently uncertainties in the software development process, it is almost impossible to establish a accurate schedule in advance, so Agile development doesn’t attempt to reflect simulated precision in the project schedule. Many traditional software development rely on a unreliable schedule and push the software engineers to the limit at the risk of reduced quality and stability.
Benefits of Agile Development
Agile development can help improve the software quality. When adopting the agile development methodology and agile project management, many organizations have improved their software quality. Throughout the life cycle, there are continuous testing in the process. Studies show that the continuous testing can help greatly in improving the quality of software.
Agile development can improve customer relationship. When adopting agile development methodology, business has found they have greatly improved the business relationship with the end user. During the development process, the software managers and project management team can hold regular meetings with the end users to adapt to their updated requirements and needs. The communication process has proved extremely popular with the end users and improve customer satisfaction.