A profound organizational and cultural change towards the Agile Software Factory: this is what companies need in order to manage situations of complexity and pressure resulting from Digital Transformation.
The model provides for the introduction of Agile and DevOps methodologies within the development, release and maintenance processes of applications, focusing on customer satisfaction, compliance with deadlines, software quality, the continuous exchange between Developers and Operations. Thanks to a highly pragmatic, flexible and collaborative approach, an important acceleration of the application time-to-market is achieved, which allows companies to be ready to seize business opportunities and react to market turmoil.
How to become an Agile Software Factory
Being an Agile Software Factory means not only adopting new technologies to automate the management of the life cycle of applications, but rather adopting an organizational and operational method that is disruptive to traditional schemes (for example, the waterfall model). We need a change of mentality that allows the development team to: focus on project returns; involve users in the development process; manage unexpected events through an iterative, empirical and adaptive approach; adopt flexible procedures that can be optimized for the specific initiative.
This is why the support of a referenced partner can represent a valid support in the transition to the Agile Software Factory, guaranteeing technological skills, knowledge of best practices, experience in management for the change.
In short, the partner will be the guide to realize the opportunities arising from Agile and DevOps methodologies, including the acceleration of the application time-to-market.
Accelerate application time-to-market
The availability of effective and ready-to-use digital services is, in fact, the key to success for any modern organization. The new Agile Software Factory model allows the development team to meet the needs of customers (internal and external to the company), reducing project risks and therefore the delivery times of what is necessary for the business.
Some examples? First of all, the combination of Agile and DevOps techniques allows both to optimize the work of the development team and to involve the Operations managers (but also the Security and Quality Control staff) in the development processes. The benefits are manifold and include: operational efficiency, code quality, adherence to project requirements, reduction of errors. A mix of factors that allows to simplify development activities, make the process fluid and minimize the risk of failure, guaranteeing the speed of releases.
The opportunities of Agile practices
Going into detail, Agile techniques such as Scrum allow the development team to better organize activities: the project (the creation of a new application or feature, the correction of a bug or the introduction of any other improvement) is broken down into iterative and incremental cycles, of short duration - from 7 to 30 days -, which allow frequent releases of code.
Users can therefore benefit from changes to the software already in progress, without having to wait for the final release. Each cycle of activity ends, in fact, with the delivery of an increase (higher stage of the software towards the ultimate goal), which is tested directly by end users. In the event of an error, the development team will have the opportunity to "straighten the shot" and proceed more quickly towards the final version of the application.
Agile allows companies to plan activities in an adaptive way (i.e. based on the changing needs of users) but in any case within cycles with a predefined duration, thus ensuring control and compliance with delivery times. The goal is achieved step by step, choosing the optimal path each time and correcting the inefficiencies. It is also possible to constantly check - and therefore try to limit - any delays.
DevOps to accelerate releases
The DevOps approach completes the Agile principles by stimulating collaboration between cross-functional teams, with highly specialized figures focused on shared objectives. Synergy and commitment of the working groups are two other keys that allow to accelerate the time-to-market of applications.
Furthermore, the purpose of DevOps practices is to create programmable processes and automate workflows (for example, according to the logic of continuous integration and continuous delivery, for which the new code is tested and subsequently distributed continuously and automatically). Automation contributes not only to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, but also to speeding up the entire software development cycle, ensuring faster releases according to business requirements.