Agile development and product re-engineering
I was involved in a discussion last week where this question cropped up on whether agile development adds value to a re-engineering effort? It got me thinking, so I probed further and I figured out that all that was being discussed was adding enhancements and sanitizing the software of unwanted features. I believe that agile absolutely adds value here, so I started thinking whether this can be applied towards a quantum re-engineering effort as well. The answer to that is also an absolute yes; however with agile it may not be necessary to re-engineer the product on the whole. Even if we should, we can prioritize which portions will be re-engineered in order to achieve better results. Whether you are developing a new product, re-engineering a product, or adding enhancements to a product, agile can add value to all these initiatives. The easiest way to use agile development is to follow these steps: Distill which parts you want to re-engineer or add enhancements to; define what these are. For example, is it about improving reliability or scalability? See if it can be factored into customer stories Break down the work into chunks of 3-10 days. Each portion of work in the cycle should provide some bit of customer value Convert the gradual improvements in performance into customer stories and roll it out for feedback Go through the feedback – loop mechanism, which results in enhancing the product while addressing customer needs. Following agile makes an engineering team’ work easier, for it satisfies both the product management and product marketing functions due to frequent releases with customer value. Also, the gradual improvement results in maximizing productivity and decreasing operational costs, all while reducing surprises in the production environment.
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