“Agile” is a collective term for methodologies (and practices) that have emerged over the past two decades to increase the relevance, quality, flexibility and business value of software solutions. These adaptive management approaches are specifically intended to address the problems that have historically plagued software development and service delivery activities in the IT industry – including budget overruns, missed deadlines, low-quality outputs, and dissatisfied users.
Although there is a broad range of Agile methodologies in the IT industry – from software development and project delivery approaches to strategies for software maintenance – all Agile methodologies share the same basic objectives:
- To replace upfront planning with incremental planning that adapts to the most current information available (i.e. the “apply, inspect, adapt” mindset)
- To build in quality upfront and then relentlessly confirm the integrity of the solution throughout the process
- To address technical risks as early in the process as possible to reduce the potential for these resulting in cost and time blowouts as the project progresses
- To minimize the impact of changing requirements by providing a low overhead structure to accommodate variations to the originally-identified requirements throughout the project
- To deliver frequent and continuous business value to the organization by focusing staff on regularly delivering the highest-priority features in the solution as fully functional, fully tested, production-ready capabilities
- To entrust and empower staff to continuously deliver high business-value outputs
- To encourage ongoing communication between the business areas and project team members to increase the relevance, usability, quality and acceptance of delivered solutions.
Agile methodologies are common-sense approaches for applying the finite resources of an organization to continuously deliver low-risk, high business-value software solutions
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