Tech entrepreneurs are producing the tools that make our lives easier. Apps that help us order delivery, edit pictures, and find out cool events happening around us. Now shouldn’t there be a way to make the lives of tech entrepreneurs easier, well there is, it's called agile development. It's a methodology of computer programming that gives the coder the ability to create a better product faster and with less headaches.
In order to really understand what agile development is about I sat down with a company that’s teaching it. Robbie Clutton, of Pivotal Labs, is a software engineer that wants people to embrace the agile movement. His main goal is that when a client leaves he wants them to be in a better position than when they came in. That’s Pivotal Labs mission. They offer their engineers’ skills and experience to clients that want to figure out a new way to design their product. Through working hands on with Pivotal engineers, clients will learn some of the values of agile. The main difference between agile and classical development is that in the later the code is focused on the big design up front. Every feature of the product is laid out in the beginning and leaves little room for change down the line. Agile is all about responsiveness to change. It values the notion that your first idea might not be great and you have to continually test and adapt your product. Such an evolutionary method couldn’t take place without the nature of collaboration between engineers. Pivotal always pairs its engineers together to have two heads working on the same problem. It allows for more creativity and less time consumed. Fast coding gives the entrepreneur the opportunities to test their product as much as possible in order to fine tune it to what the market is demanding. The more traditional way of coding would give the entrepreneur the least amount of time to test their product and less of an ability to adapt it over time.
To find out more about Pivotal Labs go to http://pivotallabs.com.
To find out more about Agile Development go to http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/agile/
