Proceso Agil - para iniciados...

Agile in a Nutshell

Agile in simple words is nothing but common sense and disciplines (practices, principles, values) which we need to use and follow in right direction with right people at all level of management and customers (Agile Project Management - Reap the Benefits).
Agile development combines creative teamwork with an intensive focus on efectiveness and maneuverability (Alistair Cockburn)

Agility is about creating and responding to change, promoting:

• A project management process encouraging frequent inspection and adaptation
• A leadership philosophy to encourage teamwork, self-organization and accountability
• A set of engineering best practices to allow rapid delivery of high-quality software
• A business approach aligning development and customer needs and company goals

What is the Challenge?

Agile development is popular. All the cool kids are doing it: Google, Yahoo, British Telecom, Vodafone, Microsoft, SAP and the list goes on.

They say Agile fits better on today’s environment where:

• Business environment changes at a dramatically increasing pace, directed by a fast moving,  unstable market.
• Innovation is the key of success
• Avoiding changing requirements, scope and technology during project’s life span, means being unresponsive to business conditions.

The market demands and expects innovative, high quality software that meets  its needs— and soon.

How does Agile face it?

Agile methods strategy is to reduce the cost of change throughout a project and embrace uncertainty, fostering flexibility and maneuverability - a competitive advantage. In front of the traditional way:

• Working hard to prevent any changes in the scope,
• Defining all features in detail, driving the cost and schedule estimates (plan-driven).

 The Agile approach is:

• Expecting and embracing scope change.
• Fixing resources and schedule, and then simply work to implement the highest value features defined by the customer, remaining the scope flexible (value-driven).

Agile Manifesto

Although it started years before, the agile movement officially began with the creation of the Agile Manifesto in February 2001. It was written and signed by seventeen “lightweight methodologists” providing a list of value statements:
"We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more."
To help people to gain a better understanding, Agile Alliance refined the philosophies captured in their manifesto into a collection of twelve principles.

Why Adopt Agile?

Organizations adopt Agile for many different reasons but they often find that the true returns of Agile processes don’t lie where they expect. In general, the benefits of Agile processes fall into five categories:

• Enhance the ability to manage changing priorities & Improve the alignment between IT and Business.
• Improve visibility & reduce risk.
• Better team morale, collaboration & knowledge sharing.
• Accelerate time to market & reduce cost.
• Enhance software quality.

You  can find more information about:

• Which are the main reasons why it is being adopted by many organizations around the world: “Why adopt Agile?”
• Which are its main benefits: Agile Benefits
• The different Agile methodologies and how to apply them in Agile in Practice (Scrum, XP, Scaling Agile..)