My experience with Agile software development as a young software developer
Tags: agile, productivity, devjournal, youngdeveloper
Published: 2022-03-21 19:02:26

**Agile software development** is probably the most used software development approach among software based startup companies. For those companies, the Agile method is the most productive way to build a successful product.

This method is a **team effort based**. The focus of the team members shall be on **delivering a working product as fast as possible rather than on a comprehensive documentation.**

**The background story, especially for u-18 developers.**
As I started studying software development at the age of 17, I faced a dilemma which was: "Studying by the book or Studying as I go by practical examples and projects".

At that time I understood that if I choose the first option as a lot of other people around me would, I would not last long in this field and my improvement would be slower than it could potentially be. I took the second choice and begun studying python and java development by re-doing tutorial projects and when I felt comfortable enough with the studied tech, I did a bigger project of my own, at that time my only goal was studying for fun and for future knowledge.

Fast forward to June 2021 (about a year and a half + few more projects later), was the moment I understood that at 18.5 years young I was capable of doing great things despite my age. As long as I've tried to get an opportunity to be part of something great or create my own opportunity, I couldn't max it out until I started to believe in my capabilities and abilities.

As soon as I started believing in my abilities, I started getting offers for participating in software projects. One of the options was to study some embedded software development stuff related to one of the projects of the company I'm currently a part of.
After studying for about a month and a half, we came to a conclusion, that I can be more productive as a web developer.
That was the first time I managed to face the agile method adaptivity style of work.

Later on, my first project at the company was collaborating with a Cardiology professor for a medical research about the possibility of predicting heart diseases according to some input parameters, in this project I had experience with agile s.w development, each day I had a daily scrum and each sprint lasted 1 week, each week I received new system requirements.

On Jan. 2022, I've started working on my current project which is on of the core systems of our product. I've got a list of requests for the system and began working, completing each task from sprint to sprint, I planned the development sprints for 2-weeks sprint each with a week of presenting what I've done in those 2 weeks and fixing the bugs that were not crucial during the sprint.

The working methodology was:

- Concept creation and some must have documentations
- Design -> develop -> test -> fix -> submit -> review -> repeat

My experience during those sprints was great, from sprint to sprint, there was an improvement in my working temp and the productivity of the sprint. I highly recommend developers, especially young developers, trying this method in their projects for getting great results in short period of time.

My agile Adoption was based on:
- Fast delivery of working demo per feature.
- Keeping my part of the project independent from the other hardware related projects. For improving the productivity of my sprints and the other projects' sprints.
- Planning my tasks from chronologically, from the first must-have functionality to the last functionality.
- Overall productivity is more important than areal productivity, finish the must complete features first, later, face the other difficulties.
- For team projects: match the role for the person, each member receives tasks according to his/her abilities.