Agile software development

(noun)

A group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. The basic idea behind the agile method is to develop a system through repeated cycles (iterative) and in smaller portions at a time (incremental), allowing software developers to take advantage of what was learned during development of earlier parts or versions of the system.

Related Terms

Examples of Agile software development in the following topics:

  • Productivity Gains from Software

    • New ways of developing and using software have led to higher efficiency and productivity through greater interaction between users.
    • Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams.
    • Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve long-term planning.
    • Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders.
    • The development cycle includes:

  • Hardware and Software Improvements

    • Improvements in software can largely be attributed to the implementation of software development models.
    • A third model is known as agile software development.
    • Agile software development uses iterative development as a basis but advocates a lighter and more people-centric viewpoint than traditional approaches .
    • A diagram laying out the steps of the waterfall model for software development.
    • A diagram laying out the steps in the spiral model of software development.

  • Trends in Management

    • Modern trends in management favor agile, iterative processes that focus on innovation, software development, and social impacts.
    • Software, non-profit, and entrepreneurship are all seeing substantial deviations from standard corporate management approaches.
    • The two big words in software management over the past decade or two have been Scrum and Agile.
    • Development Team - This will be your functional specialists, all collaborating on a daily basis to construct a facet (or perhaps the entirety) of a new piece of software.
    • A key metric to a social entrepreneur isn't profit but community impact, usually in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care, education, and community development.

  • Terminology

    • Free software under another name.
    • But the different name reflects an important philosophical difference: "open source" was coined by the Open Source Initiative (opensource.org) as a deliberate alternative to "free software," in order to make such software a more palatable choice for corporations, by presenting it as a development methodology rather than a political movement.
    • The Debian Free Software Guidelines are the requirements that a software package's license must meet in order to be included in Debian.
    • Free software can be commercial software.
    • , but the more recent Apache Software License version 2 (apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0) is also very popular—increasingly so—and somewhat better adapted to the legal landscape of modern open source software development.

  • State That the Project is Free

    • I have seen free software project web sites where the front page not only did not say which particular free license the software was distributed under, but did not even state outright that the software was free at all.
    • Sometimes the crucial bit of information was relegated to the Downloads page, or the Developers page, or some other place that required one more mouse click to get to.
    • In extreme cases, the license was not given anywhere on the web site at all—the only way to find it was to download the software and look at a license file inside.
    • Such an omission can lose many potential developers and users.
    • State up front, right below the mission statement, that the project is "free software" or "open source software", and give the exact license.

  • The MIT / X Window System License

    • If your goal is that your code be accessible by the greatest possible number of developers and derivative works, and you do not mind the code being used in proprietary programs, choose the MIT / X Window System license (so named because it is the license under which the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released the original X Window System code).
    • Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaininga copy of this software and associated documentation files (the"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, includingwithout limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and topermit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject tothe following conditions:
    • The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall beincluded in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

  • Who Should Read This Book?

    • This book is meant for software developers and managers who are considering starting an open source project, or who have started one and are wondering what to do now.
    • The reader need not be a programmer, but should know basic software engineering concepts such as APIs, source code, compilers, and patches.
    • Prior experience with open source software, as either a user or a developer, is not necessary.
    • Those who have worked in free software projects before will probably find at least some parts of the book a bit obvious, and may want to skip those sections.

  • What About The BSD License?

    • A fair amount of open source software is distributed under a BSD license (or sometimes a BSD-style license).
    • The original BSD license was used for the Berkeley Software Distribution, in which the University of California released important portions of a Unix implementation.
    • All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software must display the following acknowledgement: This product includes software developed by the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
    • Neither the name of the {ORGANIZATION} nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
    • It's not clear that without such a clause, a recipient of the software would have had the right to use the licensor's name anyway, but the clause removes any possible doubt.

  • Features and Requirements List

    • There should be a brief list of the features the software supports (if something isn't completed yet, you can still list it, but put "planned" or "in progress" next to it), and the kind of computing environment required to run the software.
    • Think of the features/requirements list as what you would give to someone asking for a quick summary of the software.
    • With this information, readers can quickly get a feel for whether this software has any hope of working for them, and they can consider getting involved as developers too.

  • "Free" Versus "Open Source"

    • On first hearing the term "free software" many people mistakenly think it means just "zero-cost software."
    • Neither browser was free in the "free software" sense.
    • For some, it might be the conviction that code developed according to an open process will be better code; for others, it might be the conviction that all information should be shared.
    • The Open Source Initiative gave a lot of people exactly what they had been looking for—a vocabulary for talking about free software as a development methodology and business strategy, instead of as a moral crusade.
    • But it is rare for a free software/open source developer to openly question the basic motivations of others in a project.