Even though the Agile Manifesto is about 20 years old, we find it is often helpful to refer back to it and especially the values and principles behind it.
By valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools, and customer collaboration over contract negotiation, we recognise that successfully building software isn’t just about hiring clever people. Rather software projects are successful because the various stakeholders work together closely, reviewing their ways of working and discarding anything which doesn’t help.
While there is always a plan at the beginning of a project, we accept and embrace the fact that this plan will change. New requirements will emerge and become important, while some features that initially seemed important may be discarded completely.
At Elastic Mint we firmly believe in the processes and practices that are common to the various Agile methodologies. We like our teams to be in regular contact with a representative of the business – ideally the Product Owner through a daily standup. We break down requirements into short user stories which will go into a backlog which the Product Owner can review and reprioritise whenever they want. We believe that by regularly delivering working software our clients can easily monitor progress. Whether it is through a showcase at the end of a Scrum sprint or at an agreed interval if we are following an approach like Kanban. We believe that demonstrating and then talking through developed features with our clients enables them to give us feedback to ensure that we are meeting their requirements.
Many companies like Scrum because of the way it breaks down development into short easily-understood chunks. The regularity of ceremonies like standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives can help when it comes to understanding progress and how well the project is going. With more experienced teams, a Kanban approach where developers simply take the next prioritised user story from backlog can also be very successful.
The key to whatever methodology is being used is to regularly review it and to ensure it is working. Ultimately our goal will always be to work closely with our customers and to deliver software that makes them happy. We will work with you to choose the right Agile methodology to achieve that.
From the start of our relationship with Elastic Mint in 2018 they have continually delivered software to the highest standards. Working with Elastic Mint gives me absolute confidence that our software development is of a very high standard with excellent functionality. They let nothing slip.
Elastic Mint challenge our thinking – their expertise plays a key role in helping us deliver our strategy and long-term vision. They provide architectural guidance and bring an outstanding level of quality and maturity to every interaction, be it software or personal
