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[InfoWorld reported last year that while agile programming is beneficial, it will nonetheless ruffle feathers.]

By Paul Krill | InfoWorld

Workshop attendees say that the iterative software development methodology provides enormous flexibility, however it will displease some developers.

In Agile programming teams build software in short iterations instead of mapping everything out in advance from beginning to end, and it offers benefits like flexibility while also poses organizational challenges, stressed by speakers at a workshop Thursday.

During an event at IBM offices in San Mateo, Calif., viewpoints on benefits and issues confronted when moving to an agile paradigm were posted by speakers from the agile development space.

“I think the challenge, whenever we try to encapsulate a short definition of agile, is that it expands in a lot of directions. Really, it’s a set of umbrella terms for a set of approaches that are going to be iterative, incremental and collaborative,” said Rich Mironov, chief marketing officer at agile consulting firm Enthiosys.

In accordance with Mironov’s presentation, the features of agile technologies focus on the frequent delivery of smaller, valuable increments and build quality in instead of adding it in at the end. Part of the process is user’s active involvement, and teams must be empowered and self-motivating. Benefits include strategic flexibility, improved team morale, deeper connection, and alignment with markets and greater profitability.

Through more direct involvement with customers can better market alignment be achieved, while profits can be increased since agile enables more software to be shipped at a higher quality and more products to be built with fewer resources, explained Mironov.

Though agile also enables early identification of project failures, it will not please everyone on the development team, Mironov said. “I haven’t seen [anybody] go through a transformation where everybody came out the other side happy. You’ll lose some folks because it’s not a style fit or they weren’t very good and you may not fit with agile. Expect some fallout or some people who need to move to the part of the organization that’s not going this way,” he added. .

At the same time, collaborative software tools will be necessary when involving remote development teams in agile projects

An audience member emphasized how agile can face opposition.

“My experience with agile is there’s a lot of resistance to it because it’s not the way we’ve done things before,” said Ryan Grisso, software engineering manager at NetSuite, which uses an agile approach and makes a hosted business application.

Johnny Scarborough, vice president of product engineering at GlobalLogic which provides software development services, touted Scrum, one of the more popular agile methods.

Among the features of scrum, there are an agile software development framework and a “ScrumMaster,” that directs the team how to use scrum as well as to serve and protect the team. No specific engineering practices are regulated. Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional when in scrum, Scarborough said. “This is a cultural change in a lot of organizations,” said he.

“Scrum is about being adaptable,” Scarborough said.

Tags: agile, development, programming, software

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