When Is the Right Time to Transition to Agile?
The state of software development has been in flux for over a decade, and teams are still struggling to determine what their next move should be. Debuting in 2001, the Agile Manifesto flipped the developing world on its head, detailing new protocols, such as putting people before processes and being able to respond to changes as needed. These are considerable shifts from legacy software projects, and the gravity of such a transition makes many teams hesitate when considering agile testing methodologies.
Beyond the doom and gloom aspect of moving to agile, there are numerous benefits that organizations may reap from such an environment. The path to achieving these advantages will have some challenges, but there's nothing that can't be overcome with a little planning.
What Better Time Than Right Now?
Although every team has different provisioning needs, starting your transition to agile as soon as possible could be the best course of action. Waterfall methods are quickly falling by the wayside and are no longer able to keep up with the speed of delivery that users now expect. To make matters worse, testing was often pushed to the very end of the project, leaving little time to thoroughly evaluate the software and resulting in numerous defects in the final deployment.
Can you really afford to keep using legacy development methods? As Wrike noted, agile businesses endure and embrace change, enabling them to take advantage of emerging trends and opportunities. In fact, 36 percent of Wrike's survey respondents went agile because it would allow them to easily adapt to changing priorities. As time continues marching on, you should look into the agile development process sooner rather than later.
Benefits to Be Gained
Agile has numerous advantages that businesses can look forward to, and the sooner you start transitioning, the quicker you'll be able to reap these benefits. Many teams seek agile to help improve their productivity and speed up their time to market. Wrike's survey found that 66 percent of businesses had velocity increases as a result of using agile processes, enabling teams to complete projects faster than ever.
"When businesses fix time, cost, and scope the only thing developers have left to manage is quality," Cottmeyer wrote. "Agile fixes time, cost, and quality and gives us the tools to vary the business and technical scope of the solution. You might not get everything you hoped for, but you can trust what was delivered."
Beware of the Pitfalls
Now that you understand that there's never been a better time to go agile, and you have a clear picture of all the benefits it offers, you're ready to go all out in your development efforts, right? Actually, it's okay to take your journey one step at a time. After all, agile entails numerous process changes, and it may take a while to communicate these operations across the board. To avoid these consequences, you can implement agile in pieces and proceed from there.
Automation integration is a great place to start, as it will help relieve your team of repetitive test cases and ensure that these scripts are executed on a regular basis. With automation, agile project teams can then focus on other efforts, such as exploratory and GUI testing, which require manual evaluation. With these powers combined, development teams can thoroughly vet their applications and verify that they are releasing a quality product every time.
Agile development process has become a major initiative across businesses, especially given the prevalence of mobile devices in personal and professional situations. By understanding the benefits and potential pitfalls, you will be able to start your agile journey today, or whenever you're ready—all you need to do is take the first step.
