Agile Development Practices: A Quick Guide

Agile is a mindset and methodology focused on delivering software iteratively, collaboratively, and adaptively. It prioritizes customer feedback, working software, and flexibility.

🔑 1. Iterative and Incremental Development

  • Break work into small, manageable units (sprints or iterations)
  • Deliver a working product increment frequently (1–4 weeks)
  • Allows regular feedback and course correction

👥 2. Daily Stand-ups (Scrum Meetings)

  • Short 15-minute team meetings
  • Each team member answers:
    • What did I do yesterday?
    • What will I do today?
    • Any blockers?

✅ Encourages communication
✅ Promotes accountability

📅 3. Sprint Planning

  • Define what features or stories to complete in the upcoming sprint
  • Tasks are prioritized by the Product Owner
  • Developers estimate effort (story points)

🔁 4. Sprint Review & Demo

  • Held at the end of the sprint
  • Showcase completed work to stakeholders
  • Gather feedback to refine the product

🔍 5. Sprint Retrospective

  • Reflect on what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve
  • Promotes continuous improvement

🛠 Example format:

  • Start → Stop → Continue
  • Glad → Sad → Mad

✅ 6. User Stories & Backlog Grooming

  • User stories follow the format:
    “As a [user], I want [feature] so that [benefit]”
  • Backlog grooming keeps the product backlog prioritized and refined

⚙️ 7. Test-Driven Development (TDD)

  • Write tests before writing the actual code
  • Encourages writing only the necessary code to pass the test
  • Enhances quality and maintainability

🧪 8. Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

  • Automate code integration, testing, and deployment
  • Push code to production frequently with confidence

Tools: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI

🔄 9. Pair Programming & Code Reviews

  • Two developers work together: one writes code, the other reviews in real-time
  • Improves code quality and knowledge sharing

📊 10. Agile Metrics and Reporting

  • Use metrics to track and improve team performance:
    • Velocity (story points completed per sprint)
    • Burn-down/Burn-up charts
    • Lead time & cycle time

💡 Popular Agile Frameworks

  • Scrum: Roles (Scrum Master, Product Owner), ceremonies, sprints
  • Kanban: Visualize work, limit WIP, continuous delivery
  • XP (Extreme Programming): TDD, pair programming, refactoring
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