My manager just recently dropped me an email asking if I would be interested in writing an article for the newsletter that we publish every month. Of course the first thing I thought was “What would I write about?”. I thought that writing some about agile development and/or Scrum could be interesting but I wasn’t sure how I’d write something for the audience that the newsletter targets (not real techy). Just yesterday I received an email from our Marketing manager saying that my manager told her that I would be writing a article on the “Benefits of Agile Software Development”. I have to give my boss credit for knowing what I’d want to write about and then putting me on the schedule to actually write it.
Now I have to figure out what the major talking point for my article is going to be. If my target audience was more technical in nature I don’t think I’d have as many questions about what to focus on, but, that isn’t the case. So if you were a non-technical business user what types of things do you think would be interesting to read about in an article about Agile Software Development?
Maybe beginning a list of the advantages that come to mind immediately will help me get my creative juices flowing:
- The highest priority for projects using agile methodologies is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
- Changing requirements are welcomed even late in the game. Change is seen as good since it indicates the team is learning new things about the system.
- Close interaction between developers and customers ensures the software being built has the needs and wants of the customer in mind.
- The technical practices that are used in agile software development:
- produce software that provides the most business value
- produce a simple, effective, architecture and design
- place high importance on technical excellence
- ensure the team is continuously improving and optimizing their practices
- ensures high quality software is produced by way of practices such as test driven development
Perhaps more important then any of this is the values of agile:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
I’m not sure if I’ve helped myself too much but at least I’ve started some rough notes that I can use later!
Reference: Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices