🐞 QA Stands For Quality p.7 - Agile Is Everywhere
What Is Agile, Scrum, Kanban And Why Everybody Is Using Them
Hey friends 👋
Welcome to the next issue of this QA series, where I share the information that helped me become a QA and that I picked up over the years to climb from a Trainee QA to managing an entire department, and that I used to teach as a course on how to become a QA from scratch.
So, last time we talked about Waterfall and V-Model, but those are not the main tools of our time. Today it’s all about flexibility, being fast to market and developing software sort of on the go with continuous feedback from stakeholders and end-users. That’s why our topic today is Agile development.
Alright, let’s get into it.
❓ What Is Agile?
Let’s start with the basics. Agile is an iterative development framework centred on adaptability, short feedback loops, and delivering small but usable increments of the product. Instead of committing to a massive, fixed plan like you would do in a Waterfall or V-Model, teams work in cycles where requirements can evolve based on new information to create a predictable rhythm: plan a small slice, build it, test it, learn from it, and adjust.
Think of it as building a huge LEGO house. Instead of buying a huge predefined set and spending two days in a row without sleep to build it, you are buying a generic set of pieces and assembling it one room at a time into whatever house you want, spending a few hours per room. With this approach, your house evolves as you are building it, constantly evaluating and reprioritising which rooms you want and how they will look.
These iterations are what we call Sprints (typically 2-4 weeks in duration) in software development, during which we produce a working piece of a bigger software product with production-level quality until we assemble it all.
The whole framework is built on 4 key principles:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
