Brief Background of the Topic
Software development in the early 1990s was in a crisis. It took approximately three years for developers to come up with an application to meet the business needs. The traditional software development approach was slow, within three years the businesses had moved on, and many projects ended up being canceled halfway because it could not meet the current needs of the businesses. Tired of the ineffective software development approach, developers came together to discuss the way forward.
In 2001, software development professionals met to discuss lightweight software development. The developers created the agile manifesto which outlines the primary values of Agile (Dingsoyr et al., 2012). The early years of agile software development were marked by few supporters and many skeptics. A number of agile methods were developed, and they include eXtreme Programming (XP), Scrum, and crystal methodologies among others. The new methods featured the core principles of the agile manifesto. The new methods had collaborative features; it accorded people privileges to processes that restricted in the past. The methods also adopted a dominant ‘lean’ mentality of minimizing unnecessary work (Dingsoyr et al., 2012).
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Reasons Why You Chose the Topic
The reason for choosing the topic is because agile development is an effective approach to software development and product management in comparison to the traditional approach. According to Abrahamsson et al. (2017 p.11), agile denotes “the quality of being agile; readiness for motion; nimbleness, activity, dexterity in motion.” Agile development focuses on lightweight, faster and nimbler software development processes. It adopts the concept of continuous delivery in software development so that all features are tested and improved before production. Agile provides concrete evidence that the code works to make the software development process faster and to hold developers accountable.
Agile is also characterized by software development processes that shorten the life-cycle of projects. The first characteristic is modularity on development process level. Agile development also features short cycles that enable fast verifications and corrections. The iteration cycles are time-bound, lasting between one to six weeks to facilitate collaboration. Another feature is parsimony in the software development process whereby unnecessary activities are removed. Agile is people-oriented in that it favors them over processes and technology to create a collaborative environment where developers can work together to simplify the design process. All the features of agile make it a better approach to software development as it eliminates most of the problems found in the traditional (waterfall) approach.
Importance and Value of the Topic
The topic is valuable because it is responsible for quality and flexible software. Agile development has value to developers and organizations. Agile development translates to financial benefits because developers deliver something of value after every two or three weeks unlike in traditional approach where clients wait for months or years for the product. Agile reduces risks and increases value in every delivery to ensure the client gets a return on investment. It is people oriented; it brings together developers and clients to assess the product in all the development phases to ensure everyone is satisfied with the final product.
Consideration Whether This Project Is Doable Within the Course Timeframe
The project is doable within the course timeframe. The scope of the project is not extensive; there is enough time to collect data from participants and analyze it. The participants are developers and organizations using agile software development approach as the study aims to explore the advantages of the agile approach.
References
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2017). Agile software development methods: Review and analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.08439 .
Dings øyr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V., & Moe, N. B. (2012). A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development.Journal of Systems & Software, 85 (6), 1213-1221.
Dybå , T., & Dings øyr, T. (2008). Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic review. Information and software technology , 50 (9-10), 833-859.
