Agile Methodology

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based oniterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes foreseen interactions throughout the development cycle. The Agile Manifesto[1] introduced the term in 2001.

What is agile development?

Whether you’re developing web applications, mobile applications, enterprise multi-platform applications or products and embedded systems, agile seems to be everywhere. But what is agile development? In simple terms, it’s a methodology that reduces development cost and risk, improves quality and enhances your customers’ satisfaction by better meeting their needs and expectations.

IBM® Rational® provides solutions to help your organization realize the benefits of agile by quickly and effectively adopting and scaling agile practices.

IBM Rational agile solutions deliver:

* Integrated tooling to plan, build and deliver agile projects for software and products.

* An adaptive process framework allowing organizations to automate and replicate agile best practices.

* An open and flexible delivery platform that frees organizations to leverage their existing commercial and open source tools.

* Tools and best practice support to extend agile to product and systems development, support large and distributed teams, and effectively meet compliance mandates.

* Training and coaching and other services to help ensure your agile success.

There are many specific agile development methods. Most promote development, teamwork, collaboration, and process adaptability throughout the life-cycle of the project.

Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning and do not directly involve...