Month: November 2020

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10 Minute Comprehensive Guide on Modern Software Development with Agile Methods

Modern software development with agile methods

When it comes to custom software development, Agile methodology is preferred because it focuses on the requirement of the customer and fast delivery.  The principles are applied to small software products developed by a single team, as well as big ones developed by programs that consist of more than ten teams.

The goal of any software development company today, as well as the clientele, is producing software at the lowest cost possible, in the shortest time and the best quality. The right planning and management of the development process and the correct methodology are critical to achieve your business goal. The Agile Methodology is a growing trend that’s exponentially growing.

Agile methodologies have helped many business organizations respond to the evolving market conditions fast, boost customer satisfaction, and boost efficiency. Still, so many organizations are facing hardships in comprehending and adopting Agile. For your brand to overcome the challenges, let’s check out an extensive guide explaining everything about modern software development with Agile methods.

Who is this Guide for?

This guide is intended for:

✔ anyone who wants to learn all the ins and outs of the agile methodologies

✔ anyone who seeks out knowledge on what agile is and why it’s monstrously awesome

✔ anyone who’s afraid of adapting the methodologies in their next software project

Your Comprehensive Modern Software Development with Agile

An Overview

Most of you probably already know that Agile has taken the world of software development and testing by storm. The majority of organizations are already practicing the software development methodology in some form. Agile, in simplest terms, is a way of managing projects.

It’s worth noting that although the approach could be used for just about anything, it was nonetheless founded originally in India. Unlike the Waterfall approach in which all the requirements are gathered from the start, and design is all done next, and then development is executed, the Agile method enables designers, developers, analysts, and stakeholders to work together simultaneously.

Traditional Waterfall Approach Limitations

The Waterfall Model was presented first by Winston Royce back in 1970, and it was intended to be used in developing government projects. It was called a waterfall because of its cascading activities with phases, which keep the development process going forward. Because of this nature, the model does not leave room for doing unexpected changes.

Making changes would be difficult and demands a lot of work as well as a waste of money and precious time. Furthermore, it also excludes the client from the project because its focus is mainly on the internal team. Today, clients want to be involved in the development process as much as possible, and since the Waterfall Model pays so little attention to the client involvement, this could mean high change requests in the development later on.

Agile—How it Works

In contrast to the traditional Waterfall Method, Agile Methodologies adhere to the iterative approach. Basically, Agile software development involves several cycles, typically called ‘sprints,’ which are individually designed, developed, and tested. To put it simply, consider every sprint as a miniature project with its own phases of design, backlog, development, testing, and deployment within a predefined work scope.

A possibly deliverable product is shipped at the end of every sprint. Simply, with the completion of each iteration, new features are being added to the main software, resulting in software growth.

Agile Misapprehensions

Even though Agile has been majorly adopted all over the world, still there remain misconceptions about the approach, including the following:

1. It’s very different

Agile could be an entirely new concept to your organization and the entire team. It also demands a bit of rewiring regarding how all stakeholders would remain on the same page during development. Nevertheless, all companies that adopt the methodology know that the new approach runs the entire development cycle smoothly and consistently.

2. It’s unpredictable

It could indeed be unpredictable at times. But it’s the same with other development approaches. Honestly, it’s entirely impossible to determine what the software should be at the start of the development exactly.

Nonetheless, unlike the traditional approach, Agile embraces unpredictability and uses it to its own advantage that leads to producing better outputs.

3. All features are prioritized by developers

There are still some people who believe that with Agile, developers decide what’s relevant, what must be implemented, and when. However, this is far from the truth since, at the start of every sprint, there is always an extensive spring meeting in which all stakeholders get to participate and decide the features that would be developed and delivered.

4. More short-term-focused

It’s hard to understand why, but some still believe that since the Agile approach splits up projects into short sprints or iterations, it doesn’t consider the long-term goals. The Agile methodology, in truth, provides a lot more benefits and provides a better way than the traditional one. Furthermore, earlier testing lets you indirectly make better decisions for your long-term goals.

5. Works only for Software and Developers

Indeed, it started out in the tech industry, but today, as it benefits an organization as a whole, it’s widely accepted even in non-software industries, such as in the field of communication, manufacturing, healthcare, and so on.

The Actual Benefits of the Agile Methodology

Today, a software development company uses the Agile methodology to stay competitive. Majority of clients anywhere in the world demand that their software solutions be developed using the methodology. Why? Because of the many benefits that it brings to the table. Check out these benefits.

1. Business Value Concentration

One of the major benefits of Agile is an increased concentration of focus on the delivery of strategic business value through the involvement of business stakeholders in the process. With this, the development team understands what matters most and could deliver the features that provide the most value to the brand.

2. Enhanced Quality

Another of the great benefits of Agile is the improved quality of a product. By dividing projects into manageable units, the team could focus on high-quality software development, high-quality testing, and collaboration. Moreover, by creating frequent builds and doing reviews and testing on every iteration, quality is enhanced by quickly finding and fixing defects, as well as determining mismatches in the expectation early on.

3. Engagement of Stakeholders

Agile provides numerous opportunities for the engagement of the stakeholders and the team before, during, and after every sprint. Through involving various stakeholders each step of the way, there’s a higher collaboration degree between teams. The team will have more opportunities to genuinely understand the vision of a business, early delivery of working software, and boosts stakeholders’ trust often.

4. Predictable and Early Delivery

By using fixed, time-boxed Sprints of 1-4 weeks’ schedule, new features are quickly and frequently delivered, with a high predictability level. Also, this provides a chance to beta test or release software earlier than planned if there’s enough business value.

5. Enables Change

Unlike the Waterfall method, one of the key benefits of Agile is that it enables change. While the team has to remain focused on delivering an agreed-to subset of product features on every iteration, there’s a chance to refine and reprioritize the overall product backlog in a constant manner. Changed or new backlogs could be planned for the next iteration, providing a chance to introduce changes in a few weeks.

6. Transparency

Clients are involved throughout the software development project. This could include prioritizing iteration planning, features, review sessions, or frequent software builds that contain new features. This nonetheless requires the customers to understand that they’re looking at a work in progress in exchange for the added transparency benefit.

7. Predictable Schedule and Costs

Since each Sprint is a fixed duration, the cost is predictable and restricted to the amount of work that could be done by the team in a fixed-schedule time box. Together with the estimates given before every Sprint, the company could easily understand the approximate cost of every feature, which boosts decision making about prioritizing the features, and the need for more iterations.

Popular Agile Methods

Every organization differs, and so the internal and external factors that they face. Therefore, to meet the different organization requirements, let’s check out a couple of the most popular Agile methods. Which methodology works for you best would depend entirely on your internal and external factors.

Scrum

It’s a popular agile management method focusing on defining the major features and its objectives at the start of each sprint. Putting it simply, Scrum was introduced to minimize the overall risk in software development while providing faster value as well. Basically, it begins with the story or requirements, explaining how the particular features should work and should be tested.

Some of the most popular Scrum tools that help in increasing the teams’ productivity level are – Jira, Nutcache, monday.com, and ClickUp.  To manage teams & projects following Scrum methodology, you can choose monday.com. While on the other hand, Jira can also be your best choice for project management and creating customized work reports.

Benefits of Using Scrum Methodology

  • Increase in project visibility
  • Manage different priorities
  • Effective usage of money & time

Kanban

Originally, Kanban was developed by Toyota because of their need to boost factory productivity. It’s a very seamless, Agile methodology that could be defined as a prioritized, big to-do list. The requirements in Kanban, just like Scrum, are monitored by their present status as well, including in development, to-do, in a test, and delivery. 

Kanban tools offer the best services to software developers and project managers. They provide Kanban boards for the development teams. These tools are – Scrumwise, Kanbanery, Volerro, and Planview LeanKit.

Benefits of Using Kanban Methodology

  • Increases efficiency & productivity
  • Reduces work time
  • Continuous delivery approach

Lean Development

The Lean development methodology is created by Toyota and is used for the software development process. It offers conceptual frameworks and principles that enable software developers to apply the Agile development approach to their projects. This methodology’s seven essential principles are – quality development, differing commitments, fast delivery, deleting things that are not important, optimization, and respecting the team. 

Lean development offers some fantastic tools like Kaizen, Value Stream Mapping, 5S, and Focus PDCA. These tools enable the teams to improve efficiency and production levels.

Benefits of Using Lean Development Methodology

  • Strengthens knowledge
  • Optimizes value-stream
  • Eliminates delay in engineering  

Extreme Programming (XP)

Extreme programming is another very popular Agile development framework used by software development companies for various dimensions. This methodology follows the values like – simplicity, courage, respect, feedback, and communication to provide a perfect solution to the customers and satisfy them. The teams following XP methodology for their projects can choose any tool from – Project Planning & Tracking System, ExtremePlanner, and Targetprocess. Besides this, if you are a Java developer, you can select any tool from – JUnit, Maven & AntHill, and Cactus. For the .Net developers, the options are – NUnit and NAnt.

Benefits of Using XP Methodology

  • Increases product quality
  • Early product delivery
  • Empowers the team

Crystal

Crystal is a methodology that comes with different variations like Crystal Red, Crystal Orange, Crystal Yellow, and Crystal Clear. These variations specify the number of team members working on a project. It has a different range from 8 to 1000 (Clear to Red). Crystal methodology works on principles like – skills, community, talent, communication, and interactions. 

Benefits of Using Crystal Methodology

  • Flexible
  • Fewer team members required
  • Fixed-rate contract

Conclusion

Evidence reveals that the Agile methodology is very effective in modern software development these days. For most business organizations, the business and people’s results make the methodology well worth the effort.

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Tips

Productivity tips busy developers need to know

developer productivity tips

Software development is a dynamic field. This has always meant that it’s essential for developers to take an active approach, and stay on top of changes. And that, in turn, means that the best developers tend to have reliable ways of keeping themselves productive.

In 2020, this trait — being able to stay productive — is arguably more important than ever. Numerous industries related to software development have taken hits, and many developers are working under different conditions than they’re used to. The ones who are best able to keep up their standard and complete their projects are the ones who are going to handle these challenges most effectively. And that leads us to our main focus: a few productivity tips busy developers need to keep in mind.

Eliminate Distractions

This is a general tip for anyone working from home, like so many developers are doing today. Basically, when you’re working from home, anything from family members and roommates, to television, to your own mobile devices can become a serious distraction, and detract from productivity. Fortunately, avoiding this issue is a simple matter of discipline. Creative Bloq posted tips on avoiding distractions that can help give you an idea of what to focus on. The best ideas they highlighted include getting comfortable physically, closing unnecessary apps, and shutting yourself into a home office all as ways to start walling yourself off from distractions.

Frankly, we see all of these as part of one bigger tip: establishing a home workspace. Particularly these days, with more people working from home, it’s important to have an area where you can be comfortable and able to focus on projects. For starters, we’d recommend an ergonomic desk and chair and a piece of lounge furniture (even a beanbag can be brilliant). Make sure temperature control and lighting are available to you. And if possible, bring in some natural light and plants. All of this will make the workspace cosy and liveable, allowing you to feel your best, focus, and stay put without feeling shut in. With a space like this, you’ll be certain to see a spike in productivity.

Schedule (Including Breaks)

In just about any situation — working from home or otherwise — a clear schedule can boost productivity in a few different ways. A Verizon Connect piece on how to work intelligently explored this idea, suggesting (rightly) that scheduling every task does two things. First, the article said, scheduling gives you a clear picture of what you have to do in a given day; second, it gives you a clear path toward a small sense of accomplishment when you complete outlined tasks. These benefits can absolutely lead to more productivity by software developers.

How you schedule will depend somewhat on your specific work and the projects you have on hand. But we recommend breaking things down (something we’ll speak on more below), and writing your schedule out in a format that allows you to cross off tasks. Even a simple Excel sheet or note-taking app (such as Evernote, OneNote, or even a simple but perfectly functional Apple Notes) can serve as a scheduling book, where you can lay out each day’s activity and cross items off as you fulfill them.

Break Down Projects

As you go about scheduling, and looking for that little sense of accomplishment you get by moving through tasks, it’s also a good idea to break down projects into parts. This might not always be doable, but in development there are often ways to segment jobs into different stages. This can first and foremost make a job seem less formidable, and make you more willing to dive in and start doing the work. But it also leads to more of that sense that you’re checking things off your list and progressing successfully through a day’s work.

These benefits are in fact what many developers get out of tools like Asana and Jira, which exist in part to help organize projects and segment tasks in an orderly fashion. While it’s easy to think of “project management” as something meant for entire teams, busy developers make excellent use out of the idea and the tools that help to make it easier.   

Automate Where You Can

“Automate stuff” was arguably the most interesting idea within Developer Circles Lagos’s developer productivity ideas posted on Medium. While that same post had some other interesting points, what showed through is the notion that people working in software development tend to have some idea of how to do a little bit of automation — say, by writing scripts that accomplish certain tasks on their own. And this sort of effort can help to simplify a job in a way that significantly improves productivity.

Automation may not help with every project, and naturally, some developers will be better able to take advantage of this idea than others. But generally, automating where you can is a sound strategy. Even using your development skills to automate a sort of record-keeping that logs your hour-to-hour activity can be extraordinarily helpful. This example would afford you a better picture of your own working habits, and enable you to adjust accordingly.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that you may not even have to do this sort of automation on your own, given the ready-made tools that exist within modern work programs. As an example, consider Slack’s “Standup Bot,” which is essentially a built-in project management assistant that can help to keep you on task.

Maintain Personal Health

Personal health doesn’t always come up with regard to on-the-job productivity, but it’s a mistake to assume it’s not a factor. As stated in our piece ‘5 Challenges for a Freelance Developer’ it’s important not to forget to “eat well, sleep and keep an eye on your health” in order to stay productive. Simply put, if your body and mind aren’t healthy, you’ll be less prepared to focus and have productive workdays. You’ll be a better and more prolific developer the healthier you are.

Written/Edited by: Amanda Fuller

Amanda Fuller is a freelance writer for over seven years. Since becoming freelance she has written extensively about work practices, both at home and in the office. She maintains that in order for a company to be successful they must pay as much attention to their employees as their profit margins. In her free time she practices yoga.

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How are developers’ needs changing due to COVID-19?

developer economics, developer survey, state of developer nation, developer report, developers needs due to covid-19

Working and performing during a pandemic will leave deep marks behind, both financially and psychologically speaking. In our latest survey, we asked developers how their needs have changed due to COVID-19. The findings shared in this post are based on the Developer Economics survey 19th edition which ran during June-August 2020 and reached more than 17,000 developers in 159 countries.

At the time of writing this post, there have been more than 30 million COVID-19 cases around the world, with 7.3 million of those still active. The virus is ubiquitous and affects all continents to more or less similar degrees. Working and performing during a pandemic is an experience that will undoubtedly leave deep marks behind, both financially and psychologically speaking.

7.2 million developers report needing flexible working hours/workload

We asked developers to select from a given set of technical and non-technical needs, up to three extra needs the pandemic has created for their own development activities. 73% of developers reported having additional needs due to COVID-19. In particular, 34%, or 7.2 million developers, expressed their need for flexible working hours/workload. 

Quarantine and social distancing policies have encouraged many employers to allow their workers to work from home, where possible. A large proportion of workers are now facing the inconvenience of relocating their working space into their home. Among such inconveniences is the necessity of taking care of households while keeping up productivity. Under these circumstances, flexibility is seen as the key to success, or simply survival.

The next most common perceived needs, reported by about one in four developers, are: 

  • collaboration tools and platforms (26%), 
  • online training resources (25%), and
  • virtual opportunities to support networking and peer-to-peer interaction (23%). 

Among these three, the only technical one, strictly speaking, refers to the need for collaboration tools, such as video conferencing platforms. The other top needs are related to self-improvement and self-management, and to socialising. 

The supremacy of non-technical needs is striking. All of the technical necessities, except collaboration tools, sit at the bottom of the list, being reported only by about one in ten developers: 

  • better performance in terms of computing resources (13%),
  •  hardware components (9%),
  •  increased security (9%), and 
  • additional cloud space (7%). 

There are two explanations for these patterns. First, developers may have not indicated the need for extra technical support because it had been already fulfilled, i.e. their employers had already provided them with it. It could also be, however, that developers did not perceive technical considerations as being more important than flexibility, networking, and learning.

The bigger the company, the more flexibility developers need

We found that the most important factor in influencing developers’ needs in relation to COVID-19 is their company size. Compared to those in middle- or large-sized companies, self-employed developers and developers working in small businesses of up to 20 employees report fewer new needs overall. That is especially the case for flexibility in terms of working hours/workload, and for collaboration tools. The most probable explanation is that they would have already implemented a flexible working schedule prior to COVID19. This is likely to apply to contractors as well as to small, dynamic startups. When it comes to keeping collaboration and interaction going, it may just be easier for small groups of people to maintain old habits or find an easy-to-use tool, such as emailing, phoning, or even getting together whilst respecting the required social distancing.

On the contrary, the bigger the company, the stronger the need for all of the above, including opportunities for virtual interactions. A large company typically requires a structured system of communication, and usually that system needs to accommodate the various teams’ diverse needs; even more so when a company is locked into an IT vendor’s services. 

Interestingly, the need for mental health support also linearly increases with company size, probably as a result of those challenges experienced in terms of flexibility and peer-to-peer communication and interaction. Another potential reason is that employees in larger organisations, where nobody is indispensable by default, may be experiencing more performance pressure and be more scared of losing their jobs.

How COVID19 is affecting developers’ technical needs 

While developers’ technical needs due to COVID-19 do not change significantly with company size, they strongly correlate to the developers’ level of involvement in tool purchasing decisions. Those most concerned about increased security, performance, and cloud space are the ones responsible for tool specs and expenses, as well as budget approval, who usually fulfill roles within technical management. 

On the one hand, with the increasing number of developers working from home, more machines need to be available and connected via VPN and similar technologies. More layers to navigate introduces complexity barriers that affect work efficiency, but also the need for the implementation of extra security controls. Furthermore, servers are often overloaded and downtimes happen more frequently, affecting system reliability. If you add to this the fact that budgets are being reduced or even frozen, due to the economic instability the pandemic is causing, the situation is actually precarious. Those in charge are inevitably the ones noticing the need for technical support the most. 

Conclusion

In a relatively short time, the pandemic has generated and consolidated a series of working practices that had been previously known only to a very small proportion of the population. Such new practices, based on remote working and virtual collaboration, are likely to persist after COVID-19. If one acknowledges this, investing in optimising support becomes even more valuable. We recommend that, especially large enterprises, consider the delicate balance between self management and collaboration needs when designing policies and offering support to their employees in the face of the pandemic situation.