What Is Agile? (10 Key Principles of Agile)
What is agile? Agile is one of the big buzzwords of the IT development industry. But exactly what is agile development? Put simply, agile development is a different way of managing IT development...
View ArticleAgile Principle 1: Active User Involvement Is Imperative
In my mind, active user involvement is the first principle of agile development. It’s not always possible to have users directly involved in development projects, particularly if the agile development...
View ArticleAgile Principle 2: Agile Development Teams Must Be Empowered
An agile development team must include all the necessary team members to make decisions, and make them on a timely basis. Active user involvement is one of the key principles to enable this, so the...
View ArticleAgile Principle 3: Time Waits For No Man!
In agile development, requirements evolve, but timescales are fixed. This is in stark contrast to a traditional development project, where one of the earliest goals is to capture all known requirements...
View ArticleAgile Principle 4: Agile Requirements Are Barely Sufficient
Agile development teams capture requirements at a high level and on a piecemeal basis, just-in-time for each feature to be developed. Agile requirements are ideally visual and should be barely...
View ArticleAgile Principle 5: How Do You Eat An Elephant?
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Likewise, agile development projects are delivered in small bite-sized pieces, delivering small, incremental *releases* and iterating. In more...
View ArticleAgile Principle 6: Fast But Not So Furious
Agile development is all about frequent delivery of products. In a truly agile world, gone are the days of the 12 month project. In an agile world, a 3-6 month project is strategic! Nowhere is this...
View ArticleAgile Principle 7: Done Means DONE!
In agile development, “done” should really mean “DONE!”. Features developed within an iteration (Sprint in Scrum), should be 100% complete by the end of the Sprint. Too often in software development,...
View ArticleAgile Principle 8: Enough Is Enough!
Pareto’s law is more commonly known as the 80/20 rule. The theory is about the law of distribution and how many things have a similar distribution curve. This means that *typically* 80% of your results...
View ArticleAgile Principle 9: Agile Testing Is Not For Dummies!
In agile development, testing is integrated throughout the lifecycle; testing the software continuously throughout its development. Agile development does not have a separate test phase as such....
View ArticleAgile Principle 10: No Place For Snipers!
Agile development relies on close cooperation and collaboration between all team members and stakeholders. Agile development principles include keeping requirements and documentation lightweight, and...
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