Agile Software Development
Agile software development is the force in the world of software development designed to face the challenges of an increasingly volatile marketplace. Changing requirements and shorter deadlines have led to an increased deviation from the practices of traditional, heavyweight processes (waterfall model) to the adoption of practices which foster a more lightweight development environment.
In general, Agile methodologies value a flexible process receptive to change rather than a rigorous process encumbered by a predefined rules and limitations. The points of the Agile Manifesto sum up the philosophies behind all Agile methods:
- Individuals and interactions over process and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Benefits of agile software development:
Eearly delivery of working software
Customer can start using the software already after 2 weeks, because the software is working, it already contains the most important functionality specified and customer can start implementing the software into the daily operations of the company and start benefiting from the solution.
Ability to respond to change faster
Customer (users) have a chance to "touch" the system from the very beginning, which allows them to see if what they required at first is really needed and according to their expectations or they prefer something different, we are able to change the system and its features immediately as system is growing to see the difference
Time and cost efficient way
Development time is broken down into small periods of time called "iterations" to prevent development of too many features to realize that some of them are not needed or that they need to be developed in a different manner, we identify need for correction and adjustment at its early stage, it saves both time and cost of the time spent on development for the benefit of our customers
No additional training cost
Due to very intensive collaboration and communication with the customer and specifically with users of the system from the very beginning there is no need for a heavy training during the implementation stage, users can do testing and play with the system after every single iteration and at the end they know the system as good as we do, because the are creating the system with us, they are our partners in the development process, NextLogic also provides training for additional users for free and on line user manual for reference
To understand agile software development approach better, please check our Delivery process picture.
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Principles of agile software development