Everything you should know about the Agile team structure

Why people adore Agile methodology and more about its development process and team structure

When you have an idea of software and want to make it real, you start planning what it should be and how to develop it. Planning is one of the most vital steps in software development, but do not underestimate software development methodologies.

One of the most popular and time-proven development methodologies is Agile. Its philosophy and practical advantages make it the best flexible methodology for developing software. Flexibility is the main reason people choose Agile, as according to Digital.ai, 64% choose Agile due to the ability to change priorities.

What is Agile and its philosophy

Agile definition. In simple words, Agile is a set of principles that creates a flexible approach to software development. The correct Agile working process consists of the following components:

• small teams that can number approximately 7-9 team members usually;
• available flexibility to changes during the development;
• constant feedback allows developers to implement all the necessary changes.

Agile philosophy. Its principles and values were well-written in the resealed Manifesto almost 20 years ago. To avoid listing all the principles and values, we will make a summary of them. The core values are communication and interaction between members and the product owner, flexibility, and a properly working product is above the paperwork and bureaucracy.

Why do companies choose the Agile approach to software development?

1. Flexibility. Agile fosters adjusting their plans according to the changing business demands and clients’ feedback. Thanks to such an approach, it is much easier to fit the client’s emerging needs and adapt to the changing market.
2. Testing. In Agile sprints, the team performs testing during each sprint. Along with constant feedback, the product is well tested already during the development process, which makes fixing bugs and other issues much easier and cheaper.
3. Product owners take a proactive part in the development. This approach emphasizes collaboration that unites all the stakeholders which improves understanding of the client’s needs.
4. High quality and fast results. When the product owners are involved in the development, it positively impacts product quality. The whole sprint is followed by the product owner’s spectating and determination of the aim and goals of the sprint.

Scrum and Agile are the same? The difference and uniqueness of the Scrum methodology.

Scrum is an Agile methodology but has some distinctive differences:

• Scrum suggests working by sprints that have a duration from 1 to 4 weeks, while in Agile it can be from 1 week to 1 month;
• Scrum has daily meetings;
• Scrum master who is responsible for hosting daily meetings, maintaining the development team, and taking care of any disturbance that can divert team members from their work.

Types of agile teams

There are three types of Agile teams:

• General. This team consists of widely competent experts who can work as a team to lead the product development to the deployment. But if some issues emerge that require narrowly specific skills, you need to hire an additional specialist. It is a high possibility of the absence of a required specialist in the general team.

• Specialist. In contrast to the previous type of team, this has specialists with specific skills who can work with certain product development goals. Here we have the thing that they can not care about the whole product development and work together as everyone works on specific tasks.

• Hybrid. The hybrid team is two previous types joined into a single one. The hybrid team can work as the general team but, at the same time, perform tasks that require specific skills.

Agile team roles and their responsibilities

To make the most out of Agile, the team structure should look like the following:

1. Project manager. In this role, the person leads the working process and manages the team to keep them at the same pace towards a common aim.

2. Business Analyst. Business Analyst detailly analyzes the market to create well-structured business requirements for the product. To BA’s responsibility, we can also add searching solutions for business, writing user stories, and creating technical documentation.

3. Tech lead. Tech lead is responsible for project tech realization and in their field of responsibility are frameworks, different tools and programming languages

4. Developers. Developers do the main part of the development, as they code according to the requirements. The developers’ mission is to produce high-quality code, improve it and follow the requirements and documentation.

5. Quality Assurance Engineers. The QA team is a vital part of the Agile team as their role is to guarantee the quality of the product to assure that it is working according to the documentation.

6. UI\UX designers. They develop the interface design of the product, defined by requirements. It can be a menu, buttons, pages, and others.

7. Product owner. The product owner has to control and prioritize product requirements due to the need to reach the desired result and to take part in the development process to ensure the development of the product goes smoothly and in the right direction. Usually, the product owner is on the client’s side.

What specialists are required throughout each phase of software development?

1. Discovery Phase:  Product owner, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Software Architect, UI/UX designer.
2. MVP Phase: Product owner, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Software Architect, UI/UX designer, and QA specialists.
3. Quality Assurance. Project Manager, Developers, QA, DevOps (depends on the project).
4. Software product development: Product owner, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Software Architect, UI/UX designer, QA specialists, and Software Developers.
5. Feedback. Project Manager, Developers, QA, DevOps (depends on the project).

Signs you have a productive Agile product development team

• The team has perfect communication. Good communication is the key to success. Properly adjusted and aligned communication channels in an agile software development team are a must and a sign of a productive team.
• Properly divided responsibilities. Well-defined responsibilities and roles make the software development process work as it has to work. 
• The team is autonomous. A team that understands the project doesn’t need constant supervision and motivation to perform the job. The autonomous teams do their job as they know what and why should be done.

Agile development process

The agile software development life cycle consists of 6 phases. They cover the whole path from an idea to the closing phase when the project has to be closed.

1. Concept. The first step in development is where you define the whole further development process. In the list, we have to define the scope of work, develop the main requirements of the functions and features needed to develop the product in the first place, set deadlines, define possible risks and issues that can challenge the development, and estimate approximate costs.

2. Inception. The inception phase is the software development start, where all the requirements are accurately defined.

3. Development phase (Iteration). The main part of the process starts here when the development team has tasks and aims. It takes the most time among other steps. Here is the process that conveys previously made requirements for features and functions into fully working software

4. Testing and final product release. Before releasing the product, it is essential to conduct testing by the QA team, who will assure that the product has no issues and bugs. In case there are bugs, the QA team will fix them. Be aware that you can not eliminate all the bugs during pre-release testing, as new bugs can emerge even after the release.

5. Maintaining. It is a crucial phase of the product. The maintenance phase takes care of supporting software on the market, fixing bugs that emerge, upgrading the product according to user feedback, and other processes that are necessary for support.

6. Ceasing support. It is the closing phase of software where the software can not perform its purpose and satisfy customer needs. There are two ways further: completely update the software according to the new market needs and trends and closely support the product to create a new one.

In sum, we have an excellent methodology that makes the software development process flexible and adjustable to change what positively impacts the speed and quality of software development.

References:

digital.ai