Enterprises are moving towards agile software development methods to increase productivity and project quality. Agile projects must adhere to agility best practices to increase their success.
Best Practices
There are seven best practices for operating agile projects. These best practices span every size of IT organization and generally apply to all agile projects. Follow these practices to optimize agile software development and drive improvements to the projects' bottom line.
1. Stress frequent releases. Long iterations tend to hide problems. Minimize risk and increase control by keeping iterations short (e.g. three to six weeks). Short iterations allow flexibility and adaptability to changing realities. They also allow the project team to catch problems faster and fix them before the problem spins out of control, or the project runs significantly over budget. Projects are completed in stages with a series of deliverables rather than a single final product. This makes modifying the direction of the project according to evolving needs much easier.
2. Keep it simple – smaller is better. Keep a tight rein on project scope. Requirements can change frequently within the project boundaries, but the boundaries must be held firm to control project size and maintain ease of communication. If project size gets too big, break it into separate projects so agility is maintained. Agile projects function most effectively at a maximum team size of 20. Consider a maximum team size of 10 for small and mid-sized enterprises.
3. Create working software, not comprehensive documentation. Documentation accompanies software to explain its use and its function. Agile projects must focus on just enough documentation for the situation. The agile manifesto's focus on minimal documentation has resulted in disagreement within the agile community over just how much documentation is appropriate.
Read On...
http://www.dotnetrobert.com/?q=node/40