Not long ago, when my colleagues and exchange to see this to say, "In the experience of agile software development methods in the process of dissemination and development of China, we are keenly aware of the lack of core software development time on a daily basis, in particular, it is closely related to programming guidance technology practice, agility destined to become a mere formality. complete lack of software design, development and quality assurance related to the practice of blindly emphasis on rapid iteration, accept changes in demand, the quality of projects will fall into rapid decay, Bug 100, the delivery of misery out of control. for this had its shape, lost its God, the lack of core competencies, talk agile respond quickly to changes in the industry to ridicule the Chinese pastoral agile. " Why such a problem will happen? Because everyone in the study of agile development is only done in form of imitation while ignoring the understanding of the nature. Well, today we'll talk about what the core objectives of agile development approach is that control of its God, our project management can focus on the essence of agile, achieve a multiplier effect.
1. The objective of faster delivery of value to customers earlier
Let's take a look at the traditional waterfall development model have any questions. The traditional waterfall model of software development experience requirements analysis, outline design, detailed design, coding, unit testing, integration testing, system testing phase before release, this process varies from a few months half a year, even large-scale projects up to 1-year period a longer, one-time value of the software delivered after all do. Now VUCA era (and external business environment is full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) time until the official release of the product or project, the business environment or the user's usage scenario has undergone great changes, product or project the function can not meet the needs of the time, the value of software delivery greatly reduced.
Unlike traditional waterfall development model, agile development model continues in an iterative manner, each iteration of the real needs of users continue to gather information and feedback on iterations, continuous delivery of products to customers or run a complete market, continued deliver value to customers.
What value has come from? Should come from the real business pain points and the actual demand or customer problems. Whether agile or waterfall or other software development methodology, its value depends on the value generated to solve problems, micro-letters have become a great product, because the solution of interpersonal communication, connecting people, information sharing issues , Baidu today's headlines and information retrieval to solve the era of information explosion, the issue of access, all users from the business value of software R & D activities, bullying.
2. The objective of a more flexible response to customer and market changes
In the requirements analysis stage waterfall development model, research needs of product designers, product design function of these design decisions are based on the assumption activity or information is not made under circumstances very complete, which means that the implementation of the follow-up from technology, real the user needs or market outlook will be a gap, the gap will lead to follow-up technology, there will be many unexpected problems arise when market. In agile development, the decision is made to continue the incremental approach. Internal collects team, customer, competitor or market information and other feedback after each iteration publication, application information to make more accurate decisions, to achieve the next iteration, which can be more flexible to respond to changes.
In summary, the core is to improve the agility of an organization to deliver value sooner and more flexible response capacity changes, all agile practices should be performed around these two objectives. We look at a more vivid example, many of my friends like to watch American TV, like many years ago the popular "Prison Break," 18-year "right game", you will find that American TV has a feature in the production of release, is the idea of the script episode episode, filming, issued such a production process, after collecting feedback from the audience, to determine the subsequent plot development according to everyone's vote, which is actually and quick thinking is the same, as soon as possible to deliver value as soon as possible cost recovery, optimization of follow-up products based on feedback information, so as to produce products welcomed by everyone.
That for a product or project, whether agile development the way it should be used? I believe that should be analyzed according to the specific business and competitive environment, characteristics of the project, can not be generalized. Products such as the Internet, competition is very fierce, no chance out a few months later, while technology development, user needs change quickly, it is very suitable for agility. For some traditional industries, the software is relatively stable, relatively large-scale projects (requires top-level design, top-down decomposition after integration), a relatively high degree of integration products, such as automotive products such less suitable for continuous delivery value, it no need to adopt agile development model. Policymakers must return to the values and nature of the software up thinking, not blindly follow the trend.
The following is recommended for a major team using agile development tools CORNERSTONE , it is a framework based on intelligent, able to create a dedicated project management and collaboration platform for the enterprise management system, includes support for research and development, defects, operations, sales and other scenes Project management. And provides file sharing, wiki knowledge base, multi-function statements, instrument views, reports and other auxiliary functions collaborative, integrated DevOps, CMDB, and other supporting tools. Science can help companies quantify the team performance, real-time control of the progress of the project, comprehensive approach to improve management efficiency.
Agile is not a silver bullet, if an organization waterfall do not project into agile or other methods certainly does not work, on the contrary, if the waterfall way to do well, but quickly replaced waterway drainage into things, because software development the essence of the method is the same, the truth is the same. Jin Yong's novels take this analogy martial arts master, a man strong enough internal strength, to learn what moves him, is a relatively simple process, Ouyang Feng reverse the meridians, and they can excel at human resource configurations, internal strength is not enough, use What moves are superfluous, walking dead man was beating and hanging. Finally, I wish you the reader focus on agility and forget God-shaped, engage in active practice internal strength, early excel own unique skills.
