Many development teams take a page out of Isaac Newton’s playbook and remain in constant motion, always deploying and shipping new code. The so-called agile development philosophy and its close relative, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), might be mainstream now, but the schools of thought are still plagued by misunderstandings and confusion.
Whether you’re on a team that’s implementing an agile framework or considering a new development position that applies the ideology, here are a few things you’ll want to know.
Agile means different things to different people. “Agile development” might have divergent meanings, from a team meeting structure to a rigorous step-by-step workflow, depending on who you talk to. Jessica Kerr, engineering manager of developer relations at software debugger Honeycomb, suggested going back to basics when attempting to understand what agile means for you and your job.
At its core, Kerr told IT Brew, agile development delivers software in smaller batches and creates feedback loops in which developers can incorporate team members’ and customers’ input as they go.
“Agile as a philosophy…is about the iteration and the feedback, and the openness to change. And then there are agile workflows, which people have used and use to implement that philosophy,” she said.
For example, Scrum and Kanban are popular agile workflows with specific requirements, but Kerr noted that agile can also be used as a catch-all term for practices that don’t adhere to those core principles.
“Sometimes…what they actually mean is we’re going to use Jira, which is a tool that you enter tickets into, and it’s just for tracking,” Kerr said. “There’s a wide range of what…people mean by agile when they say it, and you have to ask and you have to drill down into what’s important to them.”
Steven Hillion, SVP of data and AI, at workflow management platform developer Astronomer, agreed that agile can be an unhelpfully vague term. He told IT Brew that some teams claim to use agile processes when what they really mean is they implement a single element, like holding a weekly standup meeting.
But Hillion said there’s also a bright side: The philosophy has been around long enough that many of the core tenants are baked into development processes (think: short iteration cycles and continuous releases).
“A lot of the core notions of agile, especially around automated testing and continuous integration, are just taken for granted and are now table stakes for the way that modern teams run,” he said.
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It comes with a lot of jargon, but serves a purpose. Engineers who are new to the space might feel overwhelmed by the learning curve. Sitaram Iyer, senior director of cloud native solutions at cybersecurity company Venafi, suggested that managers ease their team members’ transition by focusing on how the agile and CI/CD processes can ultimately foster efficiency.
“If you throw me all these terminologies, I’m going to start not liking it, at least at the initial phase,” Iyer told IT Brew. “There are so many different things to do and track and manage, which, in my mind would feel like, ‘I’m going to slow down.’ Although, when put in proper context, it actually helps a product owner essentially [manage] all of the backlog.”
Hillion also emphasized that focusing on agile “core principles” can help engineering and data science teams cut through the noise associated with a potentially new workflow.
He suggested considering whether elements like test-driven development and pair programming might be a fit. Before ruling them out, ask, “Is that something that might seem scary at first because it’ll slow us down but might lead to higher quality?” he said.
Agile works best on a team level, not as a top-down management tool. Agile and CI/CD help your team work smarter and deliver better results, said Kerr. When upper management tries to impose the processes as a way to track output, the effectiveness often breaks down, she added.
“As a developer, it’s terrible when they start measuring your velocity, and the really terrible thing, comparing that to the velocity of other teams,” she said. “When you lose that, that part where you’re supposed to iterate on how you’re doing your work, then it sucks the soul out of the agile philosophy.”
For upper and middle managers seeking more visibility into what their development teams are working on, Kerr suggested taking stock of team members’ satisfaction level.
“If you’re asking about whether the teams are happy—often a proxy for productivity—if you’re asking about how…your teams [have] changed the way they work in the last quarter, that shows that you care,” she said.