Agile: what is it? 

Agile is a development methodology focused on the delivery of high quality software that meets the changing requirements of your business. It takes the traditional modus operandi and turns it on its head. And while not entirely new (the Agile Manifesto was drawn up in 2001), it is certainly revolutionary and will change the way you do business.

Agile is all about simplicity and feedback, built on communication, courage and respect. Its methods generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organisation and accountability, a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.

Sounds complicated? All you really need to know are the two key tenets of Agile development (they’ll sell it to you on their own).

Firstly, it’s flexible: Agile offers an ability to respond to changing requirements during the lifetime of the project – without costly and time-consuming change request processes that usually derail a project.

Secondly, it’s all about quality, delivering software that is virtually defect-free.

Its flexibility is achieved through avoiding long, detailed, technical specifications – most of which are out-of-date by the time they have been written or implemented.

Delivering quality software is achieved through key principals such as continuous integration, pair programming, shared code ownership, test driven development and code releases every one or two weeks. Traditionally, testing and evaluation is left until the end, with problems invariably surfacing in the last few weeks of the project: that’s why deadlines end up being missed and budgets are regularly exceeded. But with Agile, testing is built into the project so it’s right, right from the off.