What are Agile Software Development Practices?

Numerous modern software development companies operate according to the principles of agile software development. The principles underlying this set of methodologies are accumulated in the Agile Manifesto, a document written by 17 software developers in early 2001. Since then, many IT companies have adopted the method, especially in the field of offshore outsourcing. But what does agile exactly mean in the area of software service provision? This article outlines the basic ideas and rules behind agile software development.

Agile software development is cited to have the major benefit of allowing the implementation of changes even in later stages of a software development process. Regarding the area of offshore outsourcing, agile is often referred to as the most suitable method to develop high quality services to reasonable prices, in short time periods. Agility allows developers to guarantee better insights in development processes as they become highly flexible but efficient endeavours. For this reason, IT engineers can react to the requests of their clients faster and better. This aspect is of high value in the IT outsourcing industry as buyers from different continents than their service providers are separated through different time zones.

Agile software development methodologies include scrum, an iterative project management methodology. According to the logic of scrum, software development should be divided in project units and sprints. This division has the clear advantage to assign defined roles and accountability to every member of a company’s software development team. Conclusively the development team and the buyers gain greater control over processes. Sprint execution in agile software development further allows diligently documenting every development project and executing projects in line with empiricism.

The principles of extreme programming (XP) represent another software engineering methodology that belongs to the Agile paradigm. XP is directed to the programming elements of software development and demands capacious unit testing of all code as well as frequent code reviews. Through testing and reviewing, clarity in code can be achieved throughout the software development process and changes can be made at any stage.

Agile software development is usually a test driven approach. Already at early stages of the development of a system, testing is an integral part. This is important in order to continuously scrutinize the emerging system against current market standards. With help of test driven development (TDD), IT programmers can implement changes and corrections already before the end of the development process. Engineers who follow a TDD approach construct automated software tests that steadily accompany the software development process.

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