Traditional systems that focus on specific planning and emphasize factors such as cost, time, and scope are being challenged by agile project management that prioritizes teamwork, customer collaboration, and flexibility.
Due to the instability of the environment and the constant changes that shake the business world, companies have been rethinking their processes, approaches and methodologies to adapt to these demands for some time.
In the early 1990s, a number of software engineering thinkers proposed a number of development alternatives that departed from the dominant predictive approach.
At that time, the well-known Waterfall development cycle, characterized by the sequential order of the stages of the software life cycle, was in vogue:
Freezing software requirements in the early stages of development was the big problem with these methodologies, as they provided no certainty about the resulting development.
Faced with this difficulty, the thinkers observed several software projects and came to the following conclusions:
- Change is the rule rather than the exception in software projects.
- Since these are unstable and sometimes chaotic environments, a high degree of adaptability and creativity is required.
These premises led them to lay the groundwork for a new development methodology based on change, adaptability, and creativity.
In addition, in 2001, in Utah, USA, the famous Agile Manifesto was created and signed, which was adopted by experienced software development professionals and has 4 essential pillars of agility:
- People and interactions over processes and tools.
- Product execution based on comprehensive documentation.
- Collaboration with the customer during contract negotiations.
- Responding to change according to a plan.
In the ‘16th Annual State of Agile’ report in 2022, SCRUM was highlighted as the most popular agile framework or approach with 87% of respondents.
Clearly, agile development is distinguished by its emphasis on collaboration to achieve results and evolutionary change.
It is evident that in recent years agile has gained an advantage over traditional development, especially when it comes to involving the team, customers or stakeholders in the process, because it is much more rewarding for the customer to see product increments or demonstrations at earlier times.
High quality, higher productivity, commercial value, lower costs and faster time to market are some other benefits of its practical application that should not be overlooked.
