Agile development ideals now scaling up

It's been a big year for the concept of agility.

The next generation of business computing seems set to be heavily based on application use. If your organization doesn't have the technology or team in place to create internal and external apps, you may end up falling behind. Speed is at such a premium today that philosophies like agile have taken hold.

The gap between app-centric companies with agile methodology in place and lagging organizations that are limited to legacy software models may soon be so large that it cannot be bridged. Before this happens, there is still time to look at your own policies and needs, then create a rapid application development strategy that works for you. Agile methodology has caught on with companies, delivering a few compelling results.

Agile rising Software Development Times recently explained the path that agile has taken over the past year. Its journey has involved serious growth and development, as firms have embraced it well beyond the modest scale at which it was first conceived. SD Times noted that the development team is no longer the sole department  with a connection to agile. It’s now a go-to philosophy for many different types of personnel.

The practices associated with agile methodology at a large scale are healthy ones: SD Times reported that the Agile2013 industry gathering saw leaders in the field pointing out that workers will need to learn to contribute to joint programs. In general, teaching employees to become better team players is a strong idea, and if that’s what it takes to adopt an agile methodology, the future looks bright.

Stay on course Of course, as with any idea becoming prominent, there may be a few details lost in translation. Techworld recently reported that empathy might be the missing piece. Agile coach Jeff Patton pointed out this failing at the YOW! conference. According to the news source, Patton indicated that when companies take agile to be merely a means of developing software more quickly, they may end up creating many bad apps in rapid succession, gaining nothing but more problems.

A supportive environment While it’s exciting to see increased interest in the philosophy, companies may want to work on not only adopting agile processes but also optimizing them with a few associated projects. If this describes your business, you may benefit from implementing the cloud, if you haven’t already done so. Working with cloud services could help developers collaborate on their in-progress software, keeping tasks on schedule even as end-user feedback begins and demands on user time and attention mount.