iSky Software Agile Development

Software development techniques come and go but we think that Agile methodology will be with us for quite a while. Major challenges in software development are estimating, planning and keeping the client informed on progress. The Agile methodology that iSky has adopted (called SCRUM) goes a long way in easing these 3 pain points. You can read about SCRUM on the right hand side of this page but the way that we work is.

Define a sprint time of 4 weeks. (A sprint is like a mini-project. At the end we will have a shippable module of code that contributes to the main project)
Allocate each task a number of "story points" this is an indication of difficulty / time to complete this task.
At the end of each sprint, measure and feedback on how many story points we planned to achieve and how many actually achieved.
Complete a client demonstration of the project including the latest sprint.

To help us with implementing the SCRUM methodolgy we use Microsoft Team Foundation Server to manage our source code control system and using the Microsfot Scrum Template enables us to plan and track each sprint and hence the overall project.

SCRUM Framework

SCRUM was refined to the framework methodology that we use today by Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990's. They developed an open source project at scrum.org to educate and promote use of the SCRUM methodology.

A key principle of SCRUM is a recognition that all of the fine details of a project cannot be defined at the start so we develop a functional specification that is oriented towards the user, ie describe the system as the user will see it, while ensuring it meets the business objectives. The method recognises that customers will change their minds as new knowledge is gained over the life of the project

Using a release cycle of 2 to 4 weeks the team can measure its velocity burn rate (the rate at which it completes story points) so making the task of estimating future sprints more accurate.