Creating an agile business environment

In today's fast-paced business environment, it's becoming essential for organizations to be able to adapt at a moment's notice without slowing down production or delaying service rollouts. However, this is often easier said than done, as more trends emerge to contest the enterprise's agility. In order to successfully reach the agility a business needs to profit, efforts cannot be left solely to the IT team to achieve this goal - the firm as a whole must adjust its strategy to develop truly flexible operations.

Many times, when terms like agility or big data are thrown around, employees often leave the task up to IT professionals to handle. Software Development Times noted that becoming responsive is a long cultural change that will require continuous integration, gathering operations metrics, ensuring seamless collaboration and choosing tools that will help meet all of these needs. IT staff must create a plan to successfully become more agile and meet user expectations. If a design is not built, it could inhibit them from streamlining software development, among other processes.

"Being able to have a tool that gives the developers an understanding of where they fit in the bigger picture [that] they like using is really key because that is going to drive your adoption and ensure that the organization embraces the need for the leadership to be able to plan and track the work effectively," industry expert Andy Powell told the source.

Agile's impact on development
When it comes to using programming components, it can be challenging to create a successful app within a short timeframe. Many times, the rush to market will leave the software with bugs and other issues. Florida Today contributor Scott Tilley noted that in an agile environment, developers can leverage a whole team approach that places product quality on the entire staff rather than segmenting tasks into silos. This ensure that testers can be active throughout the app's lifecycle and that problems can be dealt with early on in development. Programmers can also embrace change and utilize automation to streamline the process without compromising the integrity of the software. These approaches will also help quality assurance staff adapt to any trends that emerge.

"Testers can perform better if they realize that the nature of agile development is rapidly changing user requirements, which in turn dictates rapidly changing test scenarios," Tilley wrote. "Rather than becoming frustrated, testers should build change into their plans and react accordingly."