Software: Agile Principles Are Changing Everything

Agile Principles Are Changing Everything
SD Times (01/01/08)No. 189, P. 1; DeJong, Jennifer
Although the formal adoption rate of agile software development is modest, underlying principles such as incremental requirement definition, inviting customer feedback, testing code while it is being written, and frequent builds are enjoying wide proliferation. "Agile principles have become IT best practices [for software development]," says IBM agile practice leader Scott Ambler. Every facet of software production is being transformed by the growing interest in agile practices, according to interviews with analysts, developers, consultants, and tool makers from which three key observations were inferred. The first observation is that the inversion of the roles of the project manager, business analyst, programmer, and tester by agile practices makes the adoption of agile principles tougher than many teams assume. The second observation is that there is no consistency in the application of agile practices between teams, which raises issues about whether a process can be enhanced by adding one or several agile practices. The third observation is that the agile development approach is not as dogmatic as it was six years ago when the Manifesto for Agile Software Development was introduced. The early days of agile development yielded important lessons, such as that rigidly following a methodology may not be viable in reality, according to the Eclipse Foundation's Bjorn Freeman-Benson. Forrester analyst Peter Sterpe says some teams embrace agile practices as a solution to failing projects, but this does not constitute agile development. Freeman-Benson concludes that a process achieves agile status when one practice leads to another practice, acknowledging that craft is needed to select a balanced set of practices. Though a report from Forrester documents the wide recognition of agile benefits such as reduced time-to-market, improved predictability, and better quality, there is a lack of empirical evidence that such advantages exist.
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