AgileSoftwareDevelopment represents a paradigm shift in how we think about and do Software Development. While traditional methods were increasingly modeled after Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line, statistics tell us that the use of this model has done nothing to reduce the 80% failure rate for software projects. (Failure: project cancelled, delivers software that is never used or which cannot be used without a subsequent re-development effort).
Over recent decades, while market forces, systems requirements, implementation technology, and project staff were
changing at a steadily increasing rate, a different development style showed its advantages over the traditional one.
This agile style of development directly addresses the problems of rapid change. A dominant idea in agile development is that the team can be more effective in responding to change if it can:
- reduce the cost of moving information between people, and
- reduce the elapsed time between making a decision and seeing the consequences of that decision.
To reduce the cost of moving information between people, the agile team works to:
- place people physically closer,
- replace documents with talking in person and at whiteboards, and
- improve the team’s amicability — its sense of community and morale — so that people are more inclined to relay valuable information quickly.
To reduce the time from decision to feedback, the agile team
- makes user experts available to the team or, even better, part of the team and
- works incrementally.
Read more about AgileSoftwareDevelopment (ASD) at the Agile Alliance http://www.agilealliance.org
OpenSpace sessions on ASD: GrowingAgilePractices2004