At DTS, we're not just agile trainers or coaches. We're an active software development team that uses agile practices on a daily basis. Agile practices permeate every aspect of our work, from software development to project management. We've adopted Scrum as our overarching agile project management/software development process. However, we also incorporate elements of Extreme Programming (XP) and Test Driven Development (TDD) into our daily practices. By using agile to guide both our project management and engineering practices, we have been able to continuously improve the quality and value of the software we deliver to our customers. We also use agile to continually improve our organizational culture and our development practices.
Tired of slipped deadlines, rushed releases, and buggy software?
Agile practices bring sanity back to software projects.
Very simply, agile practices iteratively and incrementally deliver high quality, valuable, working software to customers. Agile practices empower software development teams to effectively guide software development projects and embrace change in a project as normal and to be expected. Most importantly, agile development emphasizes collaboration and feedback, both internal and external to improve the quality and value of software as well as to provide continuous improvement of the development process itself.
The video content presented here requires JavaScript to be enabled and the latest version of the Macromedia Flash Player. If you are you using a browser with JavaScript disabled please enable it now. Otherwise, please update your version of the free Flash Player by downloading here.
The agile process is an iterative process that breaks complex work down into short iterations. Before an iteration begins, the development team collaborates with the customer to develop a backlog of stories that will address the needs of the customer. It's kind of like a to-do list for the project. The customer prioritizes the list to make sure that the most valuable stories are at the top of the backlog. The development team selects a set of stories from the backlog that they think can be completed by the end of the iteration (usually 2-4 weeks in length) and decomposes them into small tasks.
The customer reviews the backlog and can add, delete, or modify stories based on their current business needs or on the results of the last iteration. This kicks off the next planning meeting and another iteration. The team continues in this iterative fashion until the project is completed.
This is the heart of agile software development. Delivery of working software on a regular basis, customer collaboration, responding to change, and enabling and embracing the interactions of individuals on a project team.
Adding value for our clients...
The adoption and continuous evolution of Agile Practices within DTS has allowed our consultants to consistently and quantitatively improve project and product delivery for our clients. Agile removes barriers associated with traditional project management patterns, and allows us to focus our attention on what's realy important to our clients, near immediate functional impact while delivering the right software features, on or under schedule, every time."
Agile development proved beneficial, we were able to make changes and adjustments to the design without detrimental impact to the project.