Agile development is the methodology that drives business change implementation, aiming to increase flexibility, shorten cycle times, and increase throughput. Agile has several core components: the Agile Architecture, Agile Improvement, and the Agile Method. Agile Testing defines the testing procedure, which is performed against the specification and under the guidance of Agile Architectures. Agile Designing describes how architecture is conceptualized, tested, and maintained, while Agile Engineering develops the process execution using testing techniques. The combination of these three components yields the Agile Method.
Agile Assessments serve as the control method for the Agile Process. Agile Agreements and policies describe the project goals, deliverables, and implementation methods and improvement. Agile Improvement deals with testing the deliverable, checking the scope definition, and designing the change management process.
Agile assessments are primarily self-discovering. Because Agile aims to reduce defects, documentation needs to be self-discovering to be used by other Agile teams. Self-discovering documentation is also referred to as Documentation Driven Innovation (DDI). The benefit of self-discovering documentation is that the knowledge discovered is independent of the original design team, which is especially important for large
projects.
Agile assessments are designed to test the robustness of Agile tools and application delivery methodology. These tools include the Scrum method, the CMMI framework, the Lean method, the Extreme Programming model, the TQM model, and the Software Quality Processes (SOP) framework. Since Agile is about continuous improvement, the testing procedure also includes continuous deployment and parallel development among different teams. For this reason, Agile assessment tools need to have the capability to handle continuous deployment. With such a requirement, developers need a user interface that allows different teams to work on the same software simultaneously without needing to stop work on previous projects.
The benefits of self-assessment processes include time savings and the ability to determine the scope of Agile improvement without having to rely on estimates from multiple stakeholders. However, some practitioners believe that the definition of an Agile self-assessment has been overly simplified. In other words, it has been argued that Agile involves many different improvement processes and goals and that a full self-assessment is likely to be subjective and even inaccurate in some cases. This issue continues to be under debate, but most Agile implementations already include a mechanism for soliciting feedback from individual teams (see the NSCAP workshop ‘Simplifying Agile Assessment.’)
Agile assessments also help to prevent misunderstandings between teams, managers, stakeholders, and management. With feedback available at every stage of implementation, Agile improves communication and allows users and stakeholders to voice their opinion early on in the process. It also encourages teams to develop clear goals and understand their short, medium, and long-term goals. In addition, the Agile Assessments Process (AIP) helps ensure that Agile implementation is aligned with corporate goals and objectives.