Outsourcing with Agile Methodology

Agile is a repetitive process of software development. It is a modern approach to software development where the main purpose is to deliver the product to the customer frequently and increase customer satisfaction. Because in an agile approach they treat customers as a ‘God’. In the traditional approach, a product is delivered only once that also after development is done while an agile approach is totally different from the traditional approach they deliver the product to the customer as soon as possible after every change in a product.

Agile methodology always requires customer feedback and gives more focus on teamwork. In this model all activities like development, testing, requirement, etc. are always concurrent. Agile methodology allows flexibility in software development, it always works incrementally and it is very easy and quick which is the real meaning of Agile.

There are various points that are related to Agile Methodology and we are going to discuss a few of them.

Advantage of Agile Methodology over Traditional approach of software development (SDLC)

• Agile methodology continuously involves the customer at every phase of software development and takes the feedback of the customer because of this the software becomes more accurate and reliable. While in SDLC  the interaction with customers is only for the first stage i.e. requirement gathering stage after that directly final software delivers to the customer because of lack of interaction with customers many times customers do not get the right product.
  
  

• The Agile team is motivated and has good coordination between them because of the 12 principles of the agile methodology they follow. While in SDLC there may be a lack of team coordination due to no rule they follow for teamwork.
  
  

• Sprint is the fixed duration through which the overall expense of the product and the time which product will take can be measured correctly. While in SDLC there is fixed time they plan for the product but sometimes the customer gives change after seeing the product so it is time-consuming.

Sprint in Agile

In agile methodology, there is a fixed duration of time in which team members specified what work has been done and ready for review. The duration of the sprint and last day of the sprint is decided by Scrum Master (The manager or the resource provider of the team).

In the first sprint meeting, the scrum master and other team members along with the customer discuss the need for the product, which work should be done firstly, etc. After the first sprint, the customer has turned away. Commonly each sprint ranges between 1 week to 4 weeks. On the last day of the sprint, they show the completed work to the customer and he/she reviews it. And then again new sprint durations and the last day decided by the scrum master. This cycle is continued until the project is completed.

12 Principles of Agile Methodology

There are 12 principles followed by Agile Methodology, which are the given below.

• The highest property is given to customer satisfaction through early delivery.

• Always welcome changes.

• Deliver working software frequently, within a month or a week.  

• The best way to share information is a Face-to-Face conversation.

• Every team member must work together from start to end of the project.

• Build projects around motivated individuals. Trust them and create the environment they need.

• Build working projects that show the real progress.

• The team should maintain the speed of development.

• Give attention to the technical details and designing which show the pace and improvement of the product.

• Make the development simple for the while (Simplicity).

• Self-organizing teams come up with the best architecture, requirements, and design.

• Regular reflection on how to become more effective.  

XP(Extreme Programming) vs Scrum

There are two main processes of Agile Methodology, first is Scrum and another one is XP i.e Extreme Programming. Both are aligned to each other, it is really hard to decide whether you work under a scrum team or an XP team. Because both approaches follow the same concept but still there is some difference.  

• In scrum, the length of the iteration is from two weeks to a month. While the length of iteration in XP is from one week to two weeks.

• The changes during the sprints are not allowed after the first meeting of the sprint where the commitment is done. While XP is more flexible that allows changes during the iterations.

• Scrum pinpoint is ‘Self-organization’. While in XP the pinpoint is  ‘Engineering practices’.

• In scrum, the team determines the sequence of work. While XP strictly does work on the base of priority.

Outsourcing with Agile Methodology

Many software companies believe in outsourcing and also they want to adopt the agile methodology. Because through adopting the agile methodology they create good advantages for outsourcing with more flexibility.

Outsourcing with traditional goes fails when an agile approach comes into the frame.

By using traditional methods the only motive of the companies was to save the money, on the other side, the agile approaches show the real values to the companies. Outsourcing becomes more easy and transparent because of the agile methodology. The communication gap between clients and companies went away and created mutual trust. Contract outsourcing with agile does not need a rigid plan of software development, a well-designed outsourcing contract allows both parties to act in a flexible manner.

Agile Human Factors

Agile methodology focuses on the talent of an individual. Each individual has a different personality and nature, if they work together it is very common that they have to face many problems. To overcome different problems agile human factors are introduced, which focus on self-organization, teamwork, mutual understanding, etc. The following are the human factors in agile.

• Competency: All team members should have some specific skill which is required for software development. Also, knowledge about the processes used.

• Collaboration: All people should cooperate and be involved in the accomplishment of the task.

• Common Focus: Members of the agile team may perform different tasks and have different skills, but the focus of each team member should be common.

• Decision-Making Ability: The team should have the right to decide some technical points, deployment, design, etc. They are independent to take their decisions.

• Trust and  Respect: There should be trust and respect among the team.

Adopting agile methodology is not about the entire solution of the product. It helps to deliver the working product sooner to the customer. It is all about making things easy and quick. The agile methodology gives the new vision to software development.

To know the right information about the agile methodology of your software, you can contact Systemart LLC. We are ready to help you with our experienced workers, and we are ready to help and guide you through the stuffy process of software development.