The way IT industry responds to a crisis never fails to wow us. Here is another method that promises to cut costs check attrition and, most importantly, deliver the product on time, factoring in eleventh hour demands from clients. They call it agile software method, which has an internationally accepted manifesto (Manifesto for Agile Software Development) too.

“Let small teams, not exceeding 6-8 employees, work on small chunks of work” building the project brick-by-brick, the method argues. Though they work on small components of a project, it includes all aspects of product lifecycle from coding to testing, allowing project leaders to change context here even late in product development.

This holistic approach at seedling level of the project works as a strong antidote to attrition. No one is indispensable. Each team member knows what others are up to. Knowledge remains within the team.

“Like football teams gather in a jiffy for that short stand-up meetings, Agile teams would have a 15-minute brainstorming where members have to speak on three things what they did yesterday, what are they up to today and what are the challenges they face,” Mr Ramesh Loganathan, Managing Director of Progress Software, told Business Line.

Though in vogue for 10 years globally, the agile software development method has just begun to take roots. “The industry has to adopt it now to increase efficiencies in order to tackle shrinking cost advantage,” he said.

That 450 IT pros attended ITsAP (IT industry association of Andhra Pradesh) conference on agile software held on Saturday shows the increasing realisation.

“Most interesting thing is, companies need not invest much to adopt agile method. They can use openly available tools to implement,” he claimed

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