It’s proving to be an Agile life for us (Part 2)
This is one of the most strategic changes we’ve implemented at Code String since our inception in 2012. Last July, we decided to adopt Agile. Large IT companies will be familiar with Agile. Apparently, its origins date back to the 1970s, but it has become mainstream over the past decade. Going Agile is a commitment that moved us away from the traditional Waterfall methodology.
One of the main enablers of this seismic shift was the arrival of Helen, our Operations Director, who came on board with massive experience of Agile from her previous positions with large organisations. Helen is also our Scrum Master! More on that later…
Agile suits the kind of software developments that are at the heart of our clients’ projects, partly because the majority of our clients want the product fast. And partly because the Agile model tends to involve the client’s teams in development, which gives everyone visibility of progress. In our dynamic market sector of developing consumer-facing promotional initiatives, goalposts move often. And it’s also a great opportunity for clients to influence along the way.
Agile puts the focus on the end product instead of the process. Ultimately, Agile is about what we develop, how quickly we can develop it and what value the end product delivers, rather than how we develop it. As a consequence, it completely alters the way we develop it.
Adopting the Agile methodology means short bursts of development activity with testing built in to deliver incremental gains.
It’s the fact that testing takes place within the relatively-short ‘Sprint’ cycle that makes Agile so different from Waterfall. Our Waterfall processes were quite linear, with a separate testing phase after a build phase. By the time we’d built to the original requirement and were ready to start testing, the market had sometimes moved on and changed the client’s requirement. Waterfall also calls for heavy documentation early on, which made it harder to change features as the development progresses – not ideal when developing consumer-facing software. Agile changes all that.
Related posts
