Points to Remember for CIOs for Agile Software Development: Gartner
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Points to Remember for CIOs for Agile Software Development: Gartner

CIO Review

FREMONT, CA: Fast-evolving digital business scenarios are putting CIOs under pressure to support as traditional project and development methods are falling short of the mark. Enterprises are adopting agile development to fasten projects and demonstrate their value. Nathan Wilson, research director at Gartner shares his views on the capabilities of agile method to transform IT-business relationships.

Gartner highlights the principles of agile development

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Agile is systematic

Agile development methodologies have diversified approaches to software development that share common philosophy but are distinguished in the details of their implementations. Experienced organizations may use more than one approach, but startups are advised to master one approach before attempting another. Organizations shouldn’t mix agile methodologies in the hunt of brisk progress. Every component element of the methodology is crucial to the success of the methodology.

Embracing agile is a joint business-IT activity

Agile can reap benefits by engaging with business leaders, management and the user community. Enterprises having experience in applying agile methodologies can handle challenges faced but it takes years to develop necessary skills to take on large-scale software projects. Budding organizations adapting to agile have to develop the confidence and competence to take on larger tasks.

Agile is an ongoing process

Agile practitioners must be committed to continuous improvement in quality and cost-effectiveness. Analysis and learning are the fundamental components of the workload of all agile practitioners. Relatively a small team of both developers and quality assurance can deliver better outcome.

Technical Debt

Technical debt is a reflection of extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement is used in the shorter run instead of applying the best overall solution. Organizations seeking to grip agile methods have to put in place the necessary elements of the chosen method dedicated to refactoring and the elimination of technical debt.

Third-party service providers

Outsourcing service providers play a role in but communication with business users is essential in agile methodology, hence Outsourcing large amount of application development to a service provider gets limited. Agile methodologies are predicated on continuous engagement with business managers and users and lead to the delivery of a continuous stream of new and modified software into the operational environment. Other methodologies like incremental build, iterative development make their way when agile doesn’t suite the class of development problems.

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