Agile: Why it works!

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This is my first time dealing with Agile and the concept behind it is very intriguing for software development. The main ideas behind it is A) active team participation is a must, B) the requirements evolve but the timescale is fixed, C) the timescale is a shorter window and development pieces are smaller as well, D) testing is integrated and must start early. From these principals, there are also different methodologies that that sprung up after agile's development. There's DSDM, Scrum, and XP (Extreme Programming), all of which follows similar principals as agile.

One of the main reason why agile has become so popular and successful is because of the short time frames each sprint is in as well as the interchangeability of the principals. The short time frames mean that you can see your work in action sooner since you build from the bottom up instead of skipping some steps and coming back to it. Another awesome part of the short time frames is that if your product isn't working, it allows the team members to realize it isn't working and fix it almost immediately. Debugging at the end is reduced to almost nothing towards the end.

One of the troubles that teams face is the  communication, or lack thereof, between the team members. Agile forces you to communicate between the team in order to gain knowledge on what everyone's working on and how you can contribute. Members also rotate becoming the team leaders of each sprint which helps everyone grow and develop their leadership skills.

I look forward to seeing how agile helps my team and I for this project. I hope every sprint will have its requirements and deadlines met.