AGILE is T20 Format of SDLC

Hi I am Lalit Shukla; I joined Software Industry two years back, and since then I am in this go lazy field. This is my brief introduction.

Why so brief? World is fast so do we need to.

Let’s start with Cricket. Cricket has changed its format from Timeless Test Cricket – a nine day match to Test Cricket to One Day International and now the super fast Twenty-20 cricket. Nobody has the time to wait and watch the beauty of the shots; the cover drives, the straight drives etc. The batsman coming on to the pitch wants to hit the six on the very first ball he faces. Even without noticing the bounce or turns of the pitch.

Similar is the case of Software Development Life Cycle [SDLC]. This has also been changed in its form so much from its inception, the very first I had studied the Waterfall Model, in which the developers follow the classic path of Analysis, Design, Coding and Testing. But once the Testing phase fails, we used to return where we were at the initial point of our Project Initiation journey. Similar to Test Cricket, release deadline met without a concrete positive result.

This drawbacks leads to a new methodology called as Spiral Model. This model has one thing very good; i.e. something if you fails to do in your present Project; just don’t Panic, you will have the next release to follow and you can accommodate your failed Test Cases in next Release.

Gradually, the smaller Software Projects became Suites which later converted to Platforms. Therefore the number of teams started increasing and so their interdependencies. This leads to Management’ job of keeping eye on the status of the Project deliverables, slightly difficult. The number of Defects or Failed Test Cases planned for current releases moving to Future releases increases and therefore the size of the spiral. Hence a new methodology what we call as AGILE, literal means flexible came into being. The core behind this is that at every point in time every individual must be aware of what is happening in and out of the complete Project. Hence failure of one person/team doing a particular thing can be overcome by some other person’s/team presence. So Agile says be top on the specific issue to be resolved, and forget about the classics of the design specs of the complete project.

Agile in a way, says go for the core thing you are assigned to, and forget about the subsidiaries. This can be a super fast methodology of SDLC. The iteration planning/demos every two weeks are just like the fast Cricket, which says go and hit hard, and if you can’t, just RAISE YOUR HANDS, we have other batsman[developer/Defect] lined up.
AGILE says don’t think of what is going to be there in next iteration or what was there in last iteration. Following the basics of AGILE, may let the teams meet their deadlines, but it avoids the individual contributor for being a far sighted; similar to what we call INNING building in bigger formats of CRICKET. This is why bigger formats of Cricket will be there, and so should be the older methodologies of SDLC. After all, the depth of a Developer and Cricketer is measured by his PATIENCE and CONFIDENCE.