The 5 Principles of Agile Software Development Methods

One approach to software development is Agile methodology. This breaks down a project into multiple phases and distributes work across teams.

Software development methods have evolved in parallel with technological advances over the years. One approach to software development is agile software development. Agile methodology divides the project into multiple phases and distributes the work across teams. Continuous improvement is more important than focusing on the deployment stage.

During daily scrum meetings, team members are kept informed about the progress. Scrum, Extreme Programming, Feature-Driven Development, Adaptive Software Development, and Crystal are all examples of agile-based methods. These methods are chosen based on the type of product or service being developed.

The 5 Principles of Agile Software Development Methods

These agile methods all follow a set of principles. We will be focusing on five key principles of agile methodology in this blog.

1. Accept Changes and Challenges

The agile methodology emphasizes being responsive to any changes during software development. Each phase of the development process must be clearly understood by all members of our teams.

To achieve high clarity, the agile method divides tasks and deliverables into iterations. Iterations should be completed within a shorter time frame, typically between one week and four. It is important that the timeframes are consistent with the total project time.

JIRA allows us to create quick filters and improve our code. JIRA provides a clear view of agile processes through reporting functionality and custom workflows. This tool allows us to build, test, and release software.

2. Accept User Inputs

Customers are at the top of priority because agile software development uses a communicative approach. Customers should provide feedback after every iteration to help us improve our product.

Better products can be developed by thinking from the perspective of the user, rather than presuming things. One of your customers might suggest a new function that could be a great idea for your products.

This tool, Sprints by Zoho, is helpful. This tool allows the team to easily comment on code changes. This tool allows us to gather feedback from the product and then work on the changes during the early stages.
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3. Facilitate live interaction with actionable software for better visualization and feedback

Instead of creating theoretical representations, we need to make software that is practical and can be used. Although documentation is important in software development, it is only for records.

You can gain insight from customers and stakeholders by creating small pieces of working software. This aspect may be questioned by some, who argue that documentation is essential to back up our claims and provide certainty to clients. To justify the implementation of your ideas in the documentation, you need to be able to deliver tangible products. The software can change the way users perceive and understand it.

This allows us to improve and makes sure that we are all on the same page as our clients. You might state, for example, that JavaScript was used to display a warning message on the website when users entered a weak password during registration.

This feature can be displayed in the prototype to help the client visualize it. It also supports our claims. Remember to keep your documentation concise and specific. Do not include futuristic ideas in your outputs.

To create prototypes, we can use tools such as AdobeXd, InVision and Webflow before moving on to the backend programming.
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4. Software development can be accelerated with effective communication

Your project may be more successful if you have good communication skills among your team members than if you use high-end technology. Through principles such as daily scrum meetings, pair programming, and agile software development, team members are engaged.

Each team member uses daily scrum calls to keep the project status current. This helps us to find solutions for any problems the team members may be experiencing.

If the test team has not provided the code, it can cause delays in the testing process. This is a more important task for the testers than for the developers, so it must be compensated.

Teams can communicate with one another and work together to find effective solutions. Communication between teams is key to managing risks better. If a member of the team is off track, we can help!

Pair programming allows two programmers to work at the same workstation remotely or in person. One person can take on the role of driver, while the other person can act as the observer/navigator. The code is written by the driver, while the observer inspects each line as it is entered. To ensure equal workloads, programmers need to switch roles often.

Slack, Trello, and Teams are all great tools for project communication. Features such as channel creation, task assignment, messaging and meeting tools enhance the collaboration experience for agile teams.

5. Quality over Quantity

We can become too focused on meeting deadlines and lose sight of the quality aspects of the project throughout the development process. Parts of the software can be provided that meet industry standards for stability and security.

The software can be modified and improved upon. If your login system takes two minutes to onboard a user, you can reduce that time by improving the server’s latency. Keep in mind realistic quality standards and goals so you don’t waste your time trying to reach impossible goals.

To ensure quality, performance testing tools such as Selenium, Soap UI and Apache JMeter allow us to compare our work with test cases.
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Summary

These agile principles can be tailored to suit the particular methodologies, types of projects and business needs. DevOps can be used to improve our agile software development processes.