Agile Methodology

Agile methodology is a method to deliver software at a very high speed with following benefits:

1) Less communication gap between the team members.
2) Requirement changes exists.
3) Requirements are more clear.
4) Customers are involved frequently.

The first company who worked on agile methodology is Thought Works.

Agile methodology is taken from a game called rugby.

Following terms are used in agile methodology:

Scrum Master - He is the captain or lead of the team who is responsible for entire software devlopment using agile methodology.

User Story - Each and every requirement given by the customer is called user story.
Requirements are given in priority order.

Product backlog - Collection of all the requirements given by the customer in priority order is called as product backlog.

Sprint - Time taken to deliver a certain set of requirements is called as sprint.

Carry forward - Movement from one sprint to other sprint is called as carry forward.

Sprint backlog - Certain set of requirement is called as sprint backlog.

Cross skill - All the designers, developers and testers works as a team is called cross skill.

There are three types of meetings in agile methodology:

1.Sprint Planning Meeting
2.Daily Stand up Meeting
3.Sprint Retrospect Meeting

Sprint Planning Meeting

Scrum master explains the requirement to the team members.
The team members identifies their tasks:
i.Designers identifies their tasks according to their designing knowledge.
ii.Devolpers identifies their tasks according to coding knowledge.
iii.Test engineers identifies their tasks according to the knowledge of Test scenarios and Test cases.

Once all the team members identifies their tasks scrum master finally assigns the tasks.

Sprint Planning Meeting is also called as Kick off meeting or Project kick off meeting.

Daily Stand up Meeting

Scrum master and Team members do Daily Stand up Meeting on regular basis where they discuss following things:

i.What we did yesterday?
ii.What is the planning for today?
iii.What is the planning for next day?

Sprint Retrospect Meeting

Sprint Retrospect Meeting is also called as Project closure meeting, Scrum master and team members discuss the following:

i.What was right in current process?
ii.What was wrong in current process?
iii.Any improvement needed in the next release?

Advantages of agile methodology:

1) Less communication gap between the team members.
2) Requirement changes exists.
3) Requirements are more clear.
4) Customers are involved frequently.

Disadvantages of agile methodology:

1) Tight schedule of team members.
2) If two or more members of the team leave the job it may lead to project failure.