Agile development is the new standard for software processes

Software projects are quickly becoming a necessary venture for many businesses as they attempt to provide their employees with the best tools to streamline tasks and improve overall efficiency. While all developers hope for one outcome - the successful deployment and use of their product - there are numerous approaches an organization can take in order to get to their goal. With a variety of choices to pick from, decision makers must ensure that they are pursuing the path that makes the most sense for their available resources and needs.

Developing a program or a piece of software has substantially changed within the past few years. While it used to take builders numerous months or even years to code an application, this has been substantially reduced to weeks, depending on the staff's skill sets. Employees have gravitated toward using their component suites in an agile development strategy rather than the waterfall approach. While the waterfall method has distinct stages that finish before the next begins, it can be challenging to make changes after the application has been delivered. However, agile development allows the customer to be involved throughout the process and can produce a more user-oriented program, according to Segue Technologies. These capabilities will help ensure that workers can effectively leverage the software and will not abandon it for something more convenient.

Agile is innovating how companies operate
Organizations are incorporating agile development for numerous aspects of their operations in the hope that it will help make them more responsive and better able to serve customers on a consistent basis. The Sydney Morning Herald noted that small projects are being kicked off with cloud and agile development within days, reducing risk and costs for the entire process. The cloud allows users to test the program before it's deployed on a broader scale, while the agile strategy enables developers to make any necessary changes easily without needing to invest too much time or delay the software release.

"With agile, you can assess very, very quickly from a feasibility perspective whether you are going to have a development cycle that is going to deliver the outcome that you are looking for," Vodafone Australia CIO Andrew Wiles told the source. "You are almost building a business case, based on the benefit that it is going to bring to the customer, in real time."

Getting the most out of agile development processes
Whether using .NET components, HTML5 or another coding language, it must be utilized in an agile strategy in order to meet the fast-paced demands of today's business environment. According to InformationWeek contributor Erik Weber, while agile may seem like a fairly self-explanatory approach, it's easy for developers to lose focus of the big picture, risking the potential capabilities that agile can provide. This can often be seen if the product fails to launch, is not completed on schedule, developers are losing morale or the scope begins to stagnate. Many agile teams are able to turn out a product every few weeks, but if they are unhappy, it can substantially hinder efficiency. However, by understanding what agility has to offer and how to achieve it, app developers can significantly improve overall functionality.

"Agility accepts that we can't possibly know everything up front, and so the best way to create the most valuable end product is to get that product into users' hands as quickly and as often as possible, and then listen to them," Weber wrote. "Gather market data, get individual feedback, and change up the features in the product. This is what Agility is all about."