What are Agile methods and practices ?

Agile methods

Most Agile methods promote development, teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project.

Iterations are short time frames ("timeboxes") that typically last from 1 to 4 weeks. 

Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle including planning, requirements analysis, design,coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. 

This helps minimize overall risk, and lets the project adapt to changes quickly. 

Stakeholders produce documentation as required. Multiple iterations may be required to release a product or new features.

 

Agile methods emphasize face-to-face communication over written documents when the team is all in the same location. 

When a team works in different locations, they maintain daily contact through videoconferencing, voice,e-mail, etc. 

Most agile teams work in a single open office (called a bullpen), which facilitates such communication. Team size is typically small (5-9 people) to help make team communication and team collaboration easier. 

Most agile implementations use a routine and formal daily face-to-face communication among team members.

Some of the well-known Agile software development methods :

• Scrum
• XP - Extreme Programming
• FDD - Feature Driven Development
• AM - Agile Modeling
• AUP - Agile Unified Process
• DSDM - Dynamic Systems Development Method
• EssUP - Essential Unified Process
• OpenUP - Open Unified Process

Agile practices

• TDD - Test Driven Development
• BDD - Behavior Driven Development
• CI - Continuous Integration
• Code refactoring
• Pair Programming
• Planning poker
• RITE method