What is Agile
Channel: The Agile Club
Date: 2019-03-05

#agile is the ability to move quickly and easily. It is a way of life!
#agile #development is the ability to deliver valuable output in short increments. How does that relate to life?
Let's look at this beautiful princess cake from an episode of Netflix Nailed It
Despite having the finished product in front of the contestants' eyes as an inspiration and a model for quality check - we all know what the cakes from the bakers on the show turn out like
This is an example of a complex problem statement where multiple valuable pieces are brought together to deliver the final solution.
Even though the contestants are amateurs - the judges expect them to deliver the finished product all at once.  And in almost all episodes, the results are quite disastrous
Now imagine - What if the rookies were allowed to build the cake one step at a time - while asking for constant feedback and validation from the judges? What will the result look like?

Let's say they start by building the base first - a pound cake. They then ask the judges to validate the texture and the taste and provide feedback. They can immediately make adjustments as needed or if things don't work out they can start over right away.
Next they make the butter cream, validate the taste and texture and rework if needed. 
They then start modeling the fondant and the judges course correct them promptly if their dragon starts looking like a lizard.
So do you see how this works? Constant feedback provides for faster learning cycles. Imagine this being applied to every step of building the cake. What do you imagine will the output look like?

Definitely NOT like this anymore.

Now you might say that the process of constant feedback and adjustments might actually take more time that the time allocated in the show. While that might be true - imagine if the judges were actual paying customers. Do you think they would have accepted this instead of this? The only option would have been to discard the output and start all over again. 

So when we think about it, what saves us more time in producing a finished product of high quality - the Big Bang approach of trying to deliver a complex solution all at once or the incremental delivery of value with constant feedback and learning cycles?

This incremental delivery of value that results in a high quality product is what #agile #development is all about 

To learn more about the values and principles of #agile software development, visit www.#agilemanifesto.org

Created by Soniya Ahuja for http://agile.soniyaahuja.com