Today's requirements demand adapting one's own business goals and values to increasing competitive dynamics in ever-shortening cycles. Agile process models provide the ideal basis for this. The focus in this model is placed on the cooperation of all stakeholders. This lays the foundation for flexibility, responsiveness, and high customer satisfaction. This way you never lose sight of your actual project objectives.
We believe in the agile model and we are not the only ones: The CHAOS report of the Standish Group (2012) shows that projects following agile process models were 42 % successful, whereas the conservative waterfall model was successful in only 14 % of the cases. In our experience, one must add the essential criterion "quality" to the success factors mentioned in the report (time, budget, and scope). Agile projects increase this exponentially.
We have experience in a large number of various agile projects. We therefore know what methods and practices are especially critical to success.
During the analysis, we jointly take a look at your current projects, identify problem areas, and develop alternative solutions together. It is important in this process to take an integrated view: from the selection and integration of suitable technical solutions and practices, the formation of agile teams, all the way to the company-wide distribution of the agile mindset.
The specification of requirements is given a completely new structure, the empirical phase of requirements analysis is a thing of the past: the product owner vis-à-vis the departments and project managers creates a prioritised list of requirements (product backlog). He updates this at regular intervals, refines it and thus has the possibility to react individually and quickly to changed requirements.
In cycles of 2-4 weeks (sprints), the requirements with the highest priority are selected and implemented by a project team. In order to guarantee high quality, a variety of agile methods are used; continuous refactoring, pair programming, as well as continuous integration and deployment including test automation, to name just a small selection.
We stand for the highest level of quality and guarantee this through the competent selection of suitable test strategies. We use suitable tools such as JUnit, Selenium or JBoss Arquillian to build a test suite from unit to integration tests. Practices such as "Behaviour Driven Development" (BDD) are also used. These involve the departments in the project at an early stage and thus increase participation and acceptance.
In addition to process-related changes, the agile approach also means individual changes for all participants and organisational units. Agile projects can only be carried out successfully if they are accepted and lived by the organisation, the teams and each individual. We take this into account through workshops, kick-off events as well as team and individual coaching in order to meet all project participants exactly where they are.