How To Be a Kickass Agile Developer

Agile projects are 1.5X times more successful and have 64% success rate as compared to 49% success rate of waterfall projects.

It’s evident from these statistics that Agile has become a dominant model for software development.

However, Agile methods are not easy to measure and improve. Not all developers implement agile daily in application development, testing, and debugging.

To be an excellent agile developer, you need to embrace the agile philosophy and have a clear understanding of how and why agile practices lead to creation of software that is free of bugs and has a high customer satisfaction.

If you’re already a good developer and aspiring to be an awesome agile developer, the following steps and best practices will pave the way for you in the most simple and straightforward manner possible.

Let’s get started!

5 Best Practices For Developers To Excel In Agile Development

1. Kickstart with design thinking

Agile practices push people to embrace fresh ideas and experiences to bring a noticeable change in the quality of their daily application development and team collaboration work. Agile practices enable developers to get to the root of what they are doing, why, and what could be the potential results? Starting with a domain-driven design approach can help you in starting with design thinking sooner than later.

For example, practices like Start At The End can help you redesign your application and discover potential business results, like what would be the outcome if your application fails in production?

2. Implement a predictive approach.

Agile software development projects generally are centered around adjusting to dynamic, ever-changing app development environments. Enterprise developers believe it is the ideal way to become an efficient agile developer in their company. Now, the problem with this approach is that developers find it harder to understand and report about what will be their next course of action in the sprint. The predictive approach emphasizes on assessing already-known risks and planning future sprints in detail.

For example, predictive developers can precisely report tasks and functions planned for the whole development process.

3. Regularly improve code quality.

Agile developers should not hesitate to undertake continuous engagement practices for application improvement before installing code into production. Developers should have knowledge of automated tools to address complex CI processes. Automated continuous integration allows Agile developers to improve their application development agility by learning and using open source tools and patterns.

For example, Jenkins is a standard CI tool for many companies. Developers can use this tool to create and test applications in various projects through customer success software.

4. Have essential skills for agile development.

Hey you developers! You cannot be a kickass agile developer unless you have essential skills. These skills are different from your current efficiencies at work. Please note that you do not necessarily need to have all of the following skills because Agile teams are cross-functional and count on individual skills of a group of people.

• Scrum

• Kanban

• User stories

• Metrics

• Test-first

• Customer focus

• Continuous learning

• Test-first

• Agile architecture

• Agile database management

5. Own responsibility for the quality of your deliverables.

It is expected of a kickass agile developer to not only develop to spec but also raise questions when they feel that some things are not quite working. They can also recommend certain improvements to the product owner and business analyst. They review given suggestions and test their deliverable, and then hand it over to QA. In other words, efficient agile developers seamlessly collaborate with others to ensure that the final product is delivered on time, as per high-quality standards.

As well as these technical skills, you will also need well-developed soft skills to be successful in a kickass agile team. Soft skills such as communication, emotional intelligence, adaptability and problem-solving are much sought after by recruiters and can mean the difference between the success or failure of a project. SkillsYouNeed has a wealth of information on relevant soft skills and how you can work on your personal development.

6. Believe in teamwork.

Agile teams succeed or fail as a collective unit. No single individual, irrespective of how skilled they are, can single-handedly drive projects to success. Agile developers should firmly believe in the spirit of teamwork, which involves helping other developers, collaborating with QA team, updating user stories or coordinating with product owners to understand their vision, mission, goals, and objectives.

Conclusion

Five practical steps listed in this blog will help you kickstart a productive journey towards becoming a kickass agile developer as well as contribute to building a thriving development culture in your company. As you improve your agile development skills, you can also guide other developers who want to learn Agile.