Hello all, this is my first post on our team blog. I am a Project Manager here at Dot Net Solutions and my role is to ensure that agile practices are at the heart of our software delivery function. I will be looking to post snippets about agile practices, tools and our experiences here at Dot Net Solutions.
A good introduction to agile I feel is to look at the Agile Manifesto which is at www.agilealliance.org
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.
Tools and processes guide but it is people that solve problems.
Agile practices use working software as a measure of progress.
Working with your customer is paramount to ensure that you help him/her maximise business value.
The "inspect and adapt" process engrained in agile practices ensures the customer is able to catch deviations from his/her requirements early rather than after months or years as with traditional software approaches.
Requirements change as a customer's marketplace changes. It is very difficult to plan ahead for changes you cannot foresee. Agile practices welcome and cater for change.
I hope that this post gives you a steer as to what agile practices are about. I hope to post about two agile practices in more detail, Scrum and XP (Extreme Programming). These are practices we are focusing on here at Dot Net Solutions.