Why We Are Agile Developers

Standards and consistency are two important elements in the development of any software. As a developer, I employed many different types of standards over the years, including no methodology, waterfall, spiral and now agile, just to name a few. As the VP of Production for Excelisys, I saw the need to have a common methodology for developing all of our projects, regardless of the specific development tools or the people involved. With multiple project managers, an array of developers and an infinite variety of clients and projects, having a single development methodology streamlines operations across the board.

There are, as you may or may not know, so many methodologies from which to choose, the three most common of which are “waterfall,” “spiral” and “agile” development. Waterfall development, much like the image it evokes, is a “top-down” methodology best utilized when the developer and the client both know all of the details of the project up front and expect little change along the way. There is minimal back and forth between client and developer. Instead, there is an initial gathering of force and a rush of uninterrupted, full-steam-ahead development activity.

While waterfall development sounds great in theory, it is in fact unrealistic and idealistic, especially when creating custom solutions. Often times, clients are unaware of what they don’t know. They’re not sure what details to gather or what the scope of their solution could entail. In a waterfall development scenario, they are the blind leading the visionaries. As a result, instead of a Niagara Falls solution, they’re left with a trickle down the mountainside.

Spiral development is a modification of the waterfall methodology that accounts for continual feedback and revision, but still relies on a great deal of solidified details up front. So instead of an uninterrupted rush of water, spiral development includes a series of plateaus where the water can collect, spin and then fall to the next level. Metaphorically, that is.

We at Excelisys employed a spiral development process until we found that it could no longer accommodate both our talents for troubleshooting and our clients’ needs. What’s more, we found that we often did not possess enough information up front to utilize either of the aforementioned methodologies to their fullest potential. So I chose to adopt the third, waterfall-less agile development methodology.

Agile development is a lean development methodology that involves constant delivery and communication between developer and client.

The work is completed in pre-determined chunks that are presented and reviewed with the client before proceeding to the next stage of the solution.

Best of all, within the agile process, we develop against a defined set of features, written from a user’s perspective. These features are intended to be as specific as possible, and refer to a single distinct task that a user would perform, such as “print a report showing the monthly sales totals by clicking a button and specifying a date range” or “click a button on a form view to add a new invoice and go to the invoice data entry form.” Once all features are listed, they are prioritized, and assigned to specific stages of client review called releases and iterations.

It is important to reiterate the fact that in agile development, you only deliver as much as is necessary to complete the feature and nothing more. This eliminates loose ends and focuses the development. And, if better solutions arise along the way, the agile method allows for and assumes that a certain amount of re-factoring of code is going to be a part of the process.

We at Excelisys have found agile development to be an efficient and effective approach to solving our clients’ custom software needs. It allows us to begin developing right way, without the long discovery and specification time required by the waterfall and spiral methodologies. It affords us the opportunity to work closely with our clients to develop the solution that is perfect for them. Finally, agile development encourages open communication and collaboration, as clients have a great deal of input into the functionality and design of the solution, and we have the ability to quickly adapt the development to suit the needs of the client.

Ultimately, the agile development process best reflects Excelisys’ organizational strengths and talents, as well as our approach to building strong, collaborative relationships with our clients. In The Agile Manifesto, the creators of the agile development process might have said it best when they outlined the values system of the agile approach:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

“While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

We couldn’t agree more. And that’s why we’re agile developers.

Author: Kurt Knippel – VP Production/Project Manager, Excelisys, Inc.