Agile In The Software Industry
Dania El Hassan • As most of my teammates are super smart software engineers, I've learned a lot about how software developers deal with change by watching them work. In the software industry, there is a process called agile development that helps engineering teams efficiently deliver value to clients and welcome change (This is very related to the principles of Lean that you may be more familiar with).
To implement agile, our team sets intermediate goals, or sprints, that usually last around 2 weeks. We use this process to align the team toward one objective at a time. We then break it down into independent tasks that would typically take 3-5 hours. Removing dependencies makes makes it easy to distribute work and track progress.
Work changes all the time for our developers, whether it's reacting to customer feedback, fixing a bug (yes sometimes we have them, too), or releasing a big feature that requires coordination among teammates. Being and agile team means that we are able to adjust course often and still get the job done.
Communication is critical to the agile process. Each morning our team has a super fast meeting called a stand-up where we go through our tasks on Fieldwire, and discuss any blockers that would prevent us from completing our tasks on time. Everyone knows what they have to do, but being agile is about more than being accountable; its about working as a team.
What's interesting in software is that engineers have been able to build awesome tools for themselves, take Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Evernote, for instance. They're all super simple tools that don't get in your way and help you get the job done. Bringing the best construction app to the fingertips of foremen and superintendents in the field is what gets us fired up every day.
We all know construction is different from software development. It comes with its unique set of characters and plot twists. Implementing agile there is a different story, and that's what I'll discuss in my next article.
Song of the post: Changes - Tupac
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