Here at ArkusNexus, you will constantly hear the terms agile and scrum methodology, as all of our teams work with those terms, it’s important for everyone in the company to understand what those terms mean and how those methodologies work, so now I want to talk about the benefits that agile software brings to the table.
In case you don’t know by now, nearshore software development means you are outsourcing your tech to a team that is in close proximity and working in the same time zone as you. On the plus side this also means your team will be culturally aligned with you and here at ArkusNexus we believe aligning to your company culture is a must in order to have high-performing teams. It’s important to note this because for this agile approach to work we believe nearshore software development is a must.
If you want to learn more about nearshore benefits you can always check this article to understand it better and dive into the full concept of nearshore software development.
But let’s get back to agile, what exactly does agile software development mean? Agile is a methodology that can be followed in order to create different software applications, from web apps to device-specific software, agile helps bring a series of steps together and not only that, agile brings a philosophy of working a certain way to achieve effective and high-quality products.
When talking about Agile we can’t forget to bring up “The Agile Manifesto” which was written by 17 software developers in the year 2001, since then developers around the world have been following that philosophy and getting amazing results, you can click on the link to learn more about it, now to the benefits:
With the way agile software development works, the “client” or the person in charge of the operation is constantly receiving updates on the deliveries, by having sprints that vary from 2 to 4 weeks, feedback is a main driver and you always know what to expect for your next meeting. Development teams also have daily “stand-ups” which are short 15 minute daily meetings that are there to help anyone who is having problems reaching out to his sprint goals.
Having sprint meetings allows product owners to make constant changes for the end product, in a perfect world once you define an idea you will stick to it and won’t change anything until you have your end product, but that’s not what usually happens. The tech world is constantly changing and changes are a necessity to keep your product competitive, and not only that, stake-holders, direction changes, market research, are some of the things that can force you to change an initial idea and that is a good thing when you work with agile, because this methodology is made to be available to change and to quickly adapt to new tasks.
Agile software development always works with priorities in mind, in fact, getting your priorities straight is a necessity when you start working with agile, you basically can’t even start your project without defining what’s the most important thing to work first. This usually adds value to your business because you can focus on functionality that will have short-term impact on your business and then scaling up from there.
Quality assurance takes a huge role while doing agile nearshore software development, as we’ve mentioned before, feedback is a main driver of this methodology and it’s essential to reach your end goal of having high-quality products. By dividing your team into developers and QA’s you have people constantly looking for different ways to interact with your application and solving any error or bug that appears while on use. It’s important to align your tech stack in a way that everyone can be doing work on it’s own and cleanly mix the end product at the end of each sprint.
In agile methodology it’s very important to have constant engagement with your peers as you are working on a small part of a product that can be enormous. This only makes nearshoring a more powerful tool because that means having access to your team at any determined time. Again, I can’t stress this enough but feedback is driving this methodology so by being able to constantly meet with your team both the development team and client’s are constantly receiving information about the product, which translates into high-quality software.
In ArkusNexus we develop high-quality end products that are focused on impacting your business and industry from the start, contact us now and learn anything you need to know about agile nearshore software development, we have plenty of people willing to guide you through your next great business decision.
