Business leaders are not usually concerned with the inner workings of their company’s software development– but should they be? According to the methodology of agile software development, there should be more interaction between managers and programmers. When implemented correctly, agile development principles allow developers to stay flexible in order to build a quality project. The management side gets involved to qualify changes in deadline and anything else needed to enter the market.
When shifting towards agile software development, one major change is the amount of day-to-day duties the development team has. For one, they have to begin incorporating more QA measures in order to test developing software’s performance. It’s a dramatic shift for workers, but over time the agile software develop method will save them time with development processes.
Developers will learn to quit relying on manual testing, else they risk falling back to the previous waterfall processes. This allows them to catch bugs early on, so they can fix the software as they go. The more developed software is, the more confusing it is retracing your steps in order to find the bug.
The best thing a manager can do for their team when attempting to transfer to agile software development is to emphasize the importance of changing the way the team thinks as a whole. Hanging on to the old ways of developing will slow down the transition and make it more difficult to incorporate the new ways into day-to-day operations.
Managers should communicate regularly with team members. This ends up being a time intensive practice, but it’s a cornerstone of agile methodology. A main tenant for the method is people over processes. Communication is especially important because with agile, developers don’t have a defined role. Instead, they are given a certain amount of flexibility, as far as roles go. This can be pretty confusing for a manager, but it allows them to assess each team member’s strength to create more efficient processes in the future.
At Number8, we help companies transition to agile software development so they too can experience the improved processes. If you’re interested in learning more about Number8 and what we do, give us a call at 502-212-0978, or check out our information page here!
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