Companies today highly value the speed with which they can create their digital products. They seek to quickly adapt to market demands and cannot wait long months, even a year, for a website, app or any platform to be ready. The needs of the users are very changing and that is why agile methodologies contribute a lot to the development of dedicated software.
Let's start by talking about dedicated software development
A dedicated software development team is totally focused on a single project and a single client, understanding their needs and those of the project, to create the most efficient custom software possible.
The dedicated software development process is often more complex and detailed than the creation of off-the-shelf or commercial software, as it must be designed and developed according to the specific needs of the client.
One of the main advantages of dedicated software development is that the software is perfectly tailored to the needs of the client, which can improve the efficiency and productivity of the company. In addition, dedicated software can be more secure, as it is designed to meet the specific security requirements of the company or client.
Agile methodologies arrived to enhance the flow of dedicated software development
Agile software development methodologies have become increasingly popular in recent years due to their ability to quickly adapt to changing project requirements and customer needs. Rather than following a more traditional and rigid waterfall software development approach, agile methodologies focus on continuous collaboration between the development team and the customer, and the delivery of functional software increments in short, regular cycles.
“Agile software development is a more flexible way of developing software compared to a plan-based approach. This flexibility can be seen in the ability to change requirements at any phase of the software development cycle. An agile approach focuses on collaboration between customers and developers and encourages development teams to organize themselves in the workflow”, they explained in an article titled The impact of agile development practices on project outcomes, made by researchers from the Ara Institute of Canterbury, in New Zealand.
Agile methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, and Extreme Programming (XP), emphasize effective communication, iterative planning, and early and frequent software delivery. These methodologies allow development teams to work more efficiently and effectively, reduce development time, and improve the quality of delivered software. Additionally, agile methodologies encourage adaptability and flexibility, which can be especially helpful in rapidly changing software development projects.
While agile methodologies have many advantages, they also present some challenges, such as the need for constant collaboration among team members, the need for detailed planning, and the need for effective change management.
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Types of agile methodologies that exist in software development
There are several agile methodologies that are commonly used in software development, including:
How agile methodologies are applied to dedicated software development
Each of the methodologies have their own practices when applied, but they have many points in common that we will explain for you, citing the study carried out by scientists from the Ara Institute of Canterbury, in New Zealand:
| Practice | Description |
| Definition of "Ready" | When all the acceptance criteria that each deliverable must meet are met and are ready to be delivered to a customer. |
| Refactoring | The process of improving the structure of existing code while preserving the external behavior. |
| Scrum board | This dashboard is the visualization of the status/progress of the work in each sprint. |
| Kanban board | A visualization tool that provides visual progress of project tasks, workflows, and communications. |
| Hindsight | This is a meeting where the team reflects on what worked, what didn't, and why. |
| Epic | A body of work where the work can be divided into user stories. |
| Sprint/Time Box | A time slot period in which a team works to complete a set amount of work. |
| User stories | General explanation of software features from the user's perspective. |
| Poker planning | Techniques developers use to estimate the effort of a task. |
| People | A text portrait of an actual or potential user of the product. |
| Automated test | Test cases are created and will be executed automatically when new code is pushed to the repository. |
| Online tools | Tools that can be used to visualize, track and communicate. |
| Unit testing | It is a type of software testing where individual units/components of software are tested. |
| Continuous development | This is a practice of routinely integrating code changes into the main system repository. |
Agile methodologies are very useful in software development because they allow more efficient project management, increase flexibility and adaptability to changes, improve communication between team members, and foster collaboration and teamwork.
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