Organizations have learned the importance of being adaptive following the pandemic outbreak. Now more than ever, it is time to open the door to some versatility in the way we run a business.

Lest your business fall through the cracks in turbulent times, you need to employ an agile software development life cycle that embraces diversity, focuses on adding more value, helping improve responsiveness, hence adaptation to such a crisis.

Here's everything papmall® believes you should know about the agile development cycle to stand still in the cutthroat business world!

What is the Software Development Life Cycle?

The agile project management life cycle

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) refers to a set of processes that facilitate producing software at the lowest possible cost and in the shortest time, ensuring the release of high-quality software.

It serves as a framework for projecting, creating, testing, managing, and delivering guaranteed technology services. The SDLC streamlines the process of defining the current development phase and what the next steps are to complete a project.

The agile life cycle model (short: Agile) encompasses numerous iterative and incremental development methodologies in which autonomous and cross-functional teams collaborate to develop requirements and solutions. It is considered an advancement over older models, such as the “waterfall” or “CMMI” model.

The technical term seems hard to digest, so please bear with us as we dissect this definition further by breaking the agile development cycle down into six stages.

6 stages of the agile development life cycle

1. 1. Requirements analysis

In the first stage, senior team members map out quality requirements and recognize potential risks based on input from all stakeholders. This phase paints a clear picture of the project scope, the anticipated issues, opportunities, and directives.

1. 2. Feasibility study

The next step is to identify and document the software needs in the form of a ‘Software Requirements Specification’ document, which includes everything that your team will design and develop throughout the agile software development life cycle.

1. 3. Designing

The system and software design documents are prepared in this phase in accordance with the requirements specification document. It contributes to the overall system architecture and informs the next step of the agile life cycle model.

1. 4. Coding

This is when developers begin to build the entire system by writing code in the chosen programming language. During the coding phase, tasks are divided into units or modules and assigned to different personnel. It is, therefore, the longest phase of the agile software development life cycle.

1. 5. Testing

When the developers finish the software, testers will deploy it in the testing environment. The test team begins testing the system's functionality to ensure that the entire application works under the customer's requirements.

1. 6. Deployment

The final implementation phase begins once the software testing phase is completed and there are no bugs or defects found in the system. The software is finally released and tested for any implementation issues based on the project manager's feedback.

Agile product development life cycle methodologies

Agile software development is not a single methodology. Rather, it includes a variety of project management frameworks. Three well-known agile project management life cycle methodologies are:

1. 1. Kanban

Kanban is a popular agile development cycle methodology

The term Kanban originates from Japan, where the word "Kan" means sight and the word "ban" means card. In economics, it is known as a visual method for managing workflow. This method splits a ‘Kanban board’ into status columns (e.g. To Do, In Progress, Done) with limited work in them.

This means that project supervisors can push stalled work without overburdening team members. It is an agile project management life cycle as you can change the priority of a work item until it commences, keeping your project stable and marketable in a volatile business environment as you're always focusing on what's most important first.

Kanban gives full transparency to the agile software development life cycle by putting workflow in front of more eyeballs. It harnesses a team’s capacity, which is especially useful for iterations with multiple minor changes.

1. 2. Extreme Programming (XP)

More and more people are applying XP in agile life cycle model

Extreme Programming (XP) is a quality-driven methodology focusing on technical aspects of software development, making it commonplace among IT companies.

Its guiding principles are simplicity, communication, courage, respect, and feedback. XP prioritizes customer satisfaction and encourages the team to welcome changing requirements, even late in development.

Teamwork is another vital characteristic of XP, with stakeholders, managers, and team members working closely to ensure the application truly meets the needs of users. Testing in XP takes place from the start, and feedback is collected on a continuous basis to improve quality. This agile project management life cycle promotes activities such as pair programming.

1. 3. Lean Development

Lean Development is actually an underrated agile methodology life cycle

The Lean Development method pushes all levels of employees to cut business processes that do not create value. This philosophy is based on the Toyota Production System established in the 1940s, and centered around five principles:

• Identify a problem and make your product the solution
• Value all contributors that deliver an end product
• Create a continuous workflow to minimize bottlenecks
• Establish a pull system for faster performance
• Identify any possible obstacles and how to overcome them

Lean development aims to create a simple solution, put it in front of customers, and improve incrementally based on their feedback. This is critical, especially in the software industry, where speed to market serves as a competitive weapon.

Implementation of agile project life cycle

Despite its numerous benefits, Agile SDLC may fail to yield the results you expected due to poor adoption and implementation. To avoid this, you must adhere to best practices for integrating Agile technology into your business processes.

1. A. Transition Effectively

To make the most out of the agile software development life cycle, you need to adopt new technology effectively.

This requires you to keep all stakeholders in the loop and take their input into consideration. Choose a tool that makes it easier for you to communicate and connect with your customers, coworkers, and partners, helping you move from brick-and-mortar to digital with ease.

1. B. Hold Daily Meetings

You need to hold regular team meetings to talk through complex issues and ideas. These meetings can help you create a culture of accountability and handle any hassles in the transition process.

Daily meetings can help your employees to work together more effectively and achieve business goals more quickly. With these daily meetings, keeping staff up to date on changes of the development process becomes easier.

1. C. Choose the Right Methodology

There are numerous Agile methodologies to choose from, so it is essential to identify the pros and cons of each to find the perfect fit for your project.

A suitable agile life cycle model can significantly increase the chances of project success. Whether you choose XP, Kanban, or any other Agile methodology, make sure it complies with your company size, goals, values, etc.

1. D. Collect Feedback

Gathering feedback from both internal and external stakeholders is fundamental to ensure that you are meeting client expectations.

Sharing this feedback with your agile development cycle team is a surefire way to improve their efficiency and productivity. Plus, you can use client feedback to detect and improve the existing shortcomings to deliver higher-quality products for increased customer satisfaction.

1. E. Routinely Review

Only by incorporating regular review and feedback can you find the most effective iteration for product development. It is advisable to use agile software development life cycle software to examine and evaluate completed work to see if it meets the sprint goal requirements.

Over time, agile project life cycle methods have made their way around the globe and evolved into much more. As you can see, each stage of the agile project management life cycle has its benefits and drawbacks. Whether a software newbie or guru, papmall® can connect you with a large freelancer pool to find the right software developer to fit your team's needs!