As a startup, building Agile software is a non-negotiable.

With shifting goal-posts driven by investor and market conditions, a fair chance of having pivot points, and an uncertain future, developing software that can be modified or redesigned easily is critical. Having Agile practices as an underlying piece of your software development workflow gives you insurance that hours put into development will not be ‘wasted’ in the event of big changes.

But how do you go about doing this? Here are some ways to ensure your Agile implementation is successful rather than simply waterfall software development in disguise.

Have an experienced Scrum Master to lead the show

Diving headfirst into Agile development without someone who has experience in being a Scrum Master is just asking for trouble. As much as you can read about Agile software development processes and how to “do” Scrum, knowing how to actually implement and run it effectively in practice is essential.

If there is no one on your team with the experience, you can take a look at courses to become a Certified Scrum Master to upskill the most suitable person on the team. This person should be comfortable with leadership and creativity, and be enthusiastic.

Team members who have worked with Scrum before are a bonus, but not absolutely critical if you hire a truly experienced Scrum Master. An experienced Scrum Master will be able to train and lead other team members even with little to no on-the-job experience in these workflow practices.

Use digital and physical tools to help the cause

The range of tools available to support Agile software development is truly staggering. But it’s a matter of finding the right tool for your workflow, rather than modeling your workflow around a ‘great tool.’

If you have in-situ Agile teams then it’s perfectly fine to do your planning and workflow management with a big whiteboard and sticky notes - just make sure to also document on any updates as well for historical purposes. This could be through taking pictures or translation to a digital form.

For remote teams or those wishing to go more digital, you have the option to use tools like Trello or Planview LeanKit. For teams who already use the Atlassian suite for issue tracking or other purposes, Jira’s Kanban abilities can be a natural project fit.

Have DevOps as a focus in your software development

Agile and DevOps are two software development practices that often go hand in hand. While Agile is more about people and task management, DevOps is more about technology process management.

DevOps helps bring software iterations to production fast, which suits Agile Sprints - which are modular and designed to be completed fast. Baking DevOps infrastructure into your software project from the start is important.

There are, again, a huge range of tools out there to help you do this. Git for version control, Azure DevOps if you have the money to invest in it, continuous integration tools like Jenkins, Docker with Kubernetes, and Confluence are just some of the options you have on the table.

Stick with the process

The most important part of building Agile software is actually sticking with the prescribed process. You should always do daily startups, don’t let an investment meeting get in the way, for instance. Team members should disclose enough information to be useful to the rest of the group, rather than just a brief summary that only benefits them and the note taker. Priorities need to be constantly reassessed to make sure that the team is not falling behind or focusing on the wrong part. And so on and so forth.

Practicing proper Agile will help your team to be better at it and build software that truly reflects the process. If it isn’t treated as an important part of development, and more as an aside, then the software that is built may well end up being monolithic and come back to bite you later on down the track.

Need assistance?

We have a team ready and available to help make your startup’s Agile software a success. Whether you’re interested in finding a Scrum Master, one or two remote developers, or even a full team contingent, CodeFirst can help. Reach out to us to find out more about hiring for your startup’s Agile team.