a workable product that satisfies one or more desired product features to demonstrate to the customers or stakeholders. So, at the end of each iteration, the stakeholders review the process and re-evaluate priorities to ensure that the processes satisfy customer needs and company’s goal. See the diagram in figure 2 for iterative, incremental, and product development.

The iterative process used in agile software development project provides continuous integration, verification, and validation of the project development. It also provides frequents demonstration of progress to increase the likelihood that the end product will satisfy customer and stakeholder needs. Above all, early detection of defects and problems are very feasible.
Among the families of agile project management include Scrum, Extreme programming (XP), Agile modeling, Lean Development, Rational Unified Process (RUP), Crystal Clear, Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM), and Rapid Product Developments. All these families exhibit common characteristics such as

• They tend to focus on customer value by employing business driven prioritization of requirements and features.
• Iterative and incremental delivery by creating a flow of value to customers with chunks of small deliveries or functional increments.
• Experimentation and adaption by testing assumptions early and build prototypes to help facilitate customer feedback and refine product requirements.
• Continuous improvement. The self-development teams learn and adapt to change.
• Self- Organization- The team decides among themselves who and what should be done.

The Agile families also exhibit the following attributes (Jain and Chandrasekaran, 2009):

• Adaptability: to be flexible with the changing scope
• Cost Scoping: to define and address the scope of the project in terms of project cost
• Time sensitivity: to respond to changes in the schedule of the project
• Evolution: address the development process from an evolving perspective in terms of staged delivery; build frequency, and releases, to mention a few.
• Technology Tradeoffs: to optimize on technology choices to meet the goal of the project.
• Return on Investment (ROI): to analyze and address the preferred return of investment on the systems.

Survey conducted by VersionOne in 2007 shows that, among the several Agile Methodologies, the several agile methods, scrum and eXtreme Programming (XP) are the two widely used methodologies (Kennedy and Ward, 2012). States of Agile survey conducted by VersionOne in 2011 shows that approximately 60 percent of projects are Agile. Of all the Agile frameworks, Scrum is the most widely adopted. Professionals from all over the world and variety of industries are using Scrum to position their teams for greater success.


Next