Agile software development is a conceptual framework for undertaking software engineering projects. Its practices are used to improve efficiency, productivity, and quality. Agile software development consists of open project-management practices as well as highly-disciplined development practices.

One open project-management practice is customer collaboration. Get your customers involved to find out how to make your business better! Collective ownership is another important concept, in which all developers work on all aspects of the project, and all team members take ownership for the success of the project. This builds a sense of community within the team. Communication is another major factor of open project-management. Good communication is key not only amongst team members, but also between the team members and the customer. Other open project-management practices include transparency, such as big visible charts, and acceptance tests, which test acceptance criteria for a task to be considered complete.

Highly-disciplined development practices are also critical in agile software development. One important concept is a simple design. Be sure to design for today's needs, not for the future; the future can change. In addition, do the simplest thing that can possibly work. Refactoring improves code readability, performance, and simplicity. It's supported by tools and backed up by unit tests so it is safe. Another practice is test-driven development. This involves writing tests first, then writing codes. Continuous integration is another integral part of development practices.

These key practices involved in Agile can be directly applied to help solve the problems of the customer, the engineering manager, and the QA manager. On the customer's side, complaints include having little or no input into the development process and not knowing what the development team is doing. These can be solved with customer collaboration, acceptance tests, and communication. The engineering manager is often frustrated when the team encounters the same problem encountered last month, or after a lengthy requirements and design phase, the business requirements change drastically, leaving months of wasted effort in its trail. These problems can be minimized by simple design, refactoring, small releases, and test-driven development. The other issues encountered in a project are often dealt with by the QA manager. One complaint is that by the time they get involved, the project is already late and over budget. Another is that there's not enough staff to test the basic functionality, much less to do creative or negative testing. These grievances might be alleviated by using small releases, collective ownership, and test-driven development. Using these Agile practices will undoubtedly improve efficiency, productivity, and quality.

In summary, Agile has many benefits. It reduces risks, lowers the total cost of ownership, increases responsiveness, and improves relationships. Agile methodologies emphasize people and their interactions, rather than processes and contracts. It emphasizes flexibility over planning. eRichards can help you to utilize the full benefits of Agile software development.