Agile – The Latest Craze in the IT Industry

The Agile methodology promotes consistent repetition of the development and testing of the product throughout the life cycle of the software development of the project. The testing and development activities are concurrent. The solutions emerge through the collaboration between the cross-functional and self-organizing teams using the appropriate practices for their Agile Development. It is a term used for several incremental and iterative software development methods. Among the popular agile methodologies are Extreme Programming (XP), Crystal, Scrum, Lean Software Development, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), and Feature Driven Development (FDD).

Due to the rising demand of agile in the organizations, they are hiring agile developers in their companies with good salary. You can get a lucrative job as an Agile Developer with an Agile developer training program.

The Methodologies of Agile Testing Are As Follows:

#1. Scrum

This method concentrates on how to tackle tasks within the development environment of a team. The requirements for the product are tracked in details in the Product backlog. It is managed and prioritized by the product owner and distributed to the Scrum team, whose members can request for new requirement addition, deletion or modification. Scrum empowers development team and recommends working in small groups of 7-9 members. It comprises of three roles, such as:

• Scrum Master:  He is responsible for setting up the team, preside over meetings and remove impediments to progress.

• Product owner: He creates the product backlog and prioritizes it and delivers the functionality at each iteration.

• Scrum Team: This team is responsible for completing the product life cycle.

#2. eXtreme Programming (XP)

This is a very useful method during constant changing requirements or demands from the customers or when there is no surety of the functionality of the system. It recommends frequent product releases in very short development cycles, which enhances system productivity and acts as a checkpoint, so that customer requirements can be incorporated. It targets the software keeping customers. It gathers all the business requirements as stories, which are stored in the parking lot. In this method, releases are based on short cycles, called iteration, with a period of 14 days. Each iteration involves phases like unit testing, coding and system testing, where some major or minor functionality are built into the application at each phase.

Phases of eXtreme Programming:

• Planning: This phase helps in the Identification of sponsors and stakeholders and infrastructure needs, collects information related to security and ensures the service level agreements, along with its conditions.

• Analysis: It involves the capturing and prioritizing of  the Stories in the Parking lot, scrubbing of the  stories for estimation, defining the iteration SPAN and enables in resource planning for the QA and development teams

• Design: It involves the breakup of tasks, preparation of test scenario for each of the tasks and establishing the regression automation framework.

• Execution: It involves coding, carrying out of  manual test scenarios, Unit Testing, generation of defective report, transformation of the manual to the automation regression test cases, mid iteration review and end iteration review.

• Wrapping: It involves small releases, regression testing, developing new stories and process improvements.

• Closure: It includes the training, pilot and product launch, production support and reviewing the production support.

#3. Crystal Methodologies

This method is based on three concepts such as:

• Chartering: The activities of this phase include carrying out preliminary feasibility analysis and fine tuning this method of development.

• Cyclic Delivery: The development phase comprises of two delivery cycles that reviews the project plans and refines the release plans.

• Wrap Up: The activities here include the deployment in the user environment followed by reviews and reflections.

#4. Dynamic Software Development Method (DSDM)

This method employs the Time Boxing, Prototyping and Moscow Rules techniques and this method involves the active participation of users and teams are empowered to take decisions.

Phases of DSDM:

• Pre-project study

• Feasibility study

• Business study functional model

• Iteration design and build iteration

• Implementation post-project

#5. Feature Driven Development (FDD)

This method involves building and designing features and describes every short phase of the work that has to be completed per feature. Modeling of domain object, class ownership, inspections, regular builds, configuration management etc. have to be kept in mind during this phase.

The Phases of FDD:

• Domain Walkthrough

• Design Inspection

• romote To Build

• Code Inspection

• Design

#6. Lean Software Development

This method aims at augmenting the software development speed and minimizing cost and is based on the principle of “just in time production”.

The Phases of Lean Software Development:

• Eliminating waste

• Amplifying learning

• Defer commitment

• Early delivery

• Empowering the team

• Building integrity

• Optimize the whole

It is mandatory to have adequate knowledge of agile as it is now extensively used in many organizations. You can get a lucrative job in a reputed organization with an Agile and software development certification program.