All about Agile SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)

In a rapidly changing business world, companies must adapt quickly to new market demands, customer needs, and advancing technologies. Agile methodology offers a solution, providing a flexible, iterative approach to software development that fosters collaboration, fast feedback, and continuous improvement.

This guide covers the Agile Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), breaking down each phase with actionable tips and best practices for teams aiming to implement Agile. Plus, access our free Agile template to help you get started right away.

What is the Agile SDLC Model?

The Agile SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) model is a flexible approach to software development that prioritizes collaboration, adaptability, and quick iteration. Unlike traditional models that follow a strict sequence, Agile allows teams to adjust their plans and incorporate feedback at any stage, making it ideal for projects where requirements may evolve.

In Agile SDLC, the process is divided into short, manageable cycles called “sprints” or “iterations.” Each sprint includes planning, development, testing, and feedback sessions, ensuring continuous improvement and regular check-ins. This model is all about teamwork, frequent product updates, and delivering value to customers at every step.

4 C’s of Agile

The 4Cs exist to help agile and other project managers remember how to best hold people accountable: clarity, commitment, comment, and coach. 

1. Clarity. Clarifying what is required is the first step. Clarity of purpose, strategy, and roles and responsibilities facilitates the ability to hold individuals accountable, as they will understand what is expected of them. It establishes minimum standards.
2. Commitment. Commitment is bidirectional. During the daily stand-up meeting, an essential agile event, team members vow to what they will work on the following day. 
3. Comment. When objectives are not met and activities are not completed as anticipated, team members must be informed. They need constructive feedback.  This is not criticism, but rather an opportunity to discuss with the team member why they were unable to meet their obligations. 
4. Coach. Agile project managers must assume the roles of instructor and mentor when assuming the servant leadership role. Intentionally schedule one-on-one meetings with each team member to determine how you can best assist them in their work and professional development, and to recommend steps they can take to reduce waste and become more productive team members.

In addition to remembering the 4Cs, a servant leader must also exhibit the desired behaviours and be perceived as having high integrity.  Building trust with the team and holding the team accountable for their work are two crucial steps in ensuring that the team is performing at its peak and making progress toward becoming a high-performing team.

Why is Agile SDLC important?

Agile SDLC is important because it marks a significant shift from traditional, rigid development methods, such as the Waterfall model, which follow a linear, sequential process. Traditional methods often struggle to adapt to changes once development is underway, making it challenging to respond to evolving requirements or customer feedback. Agile’s iterative approach, by contrast, embraces change at any stage, allowing teams to respond quickly to market shifts.

Some key points that underline the importance of Agile Software Development Life Cycle for the industry are:

• Adaptability to Change: Unlike traditional models, Agile SDLC allows teams to pivot and adapt to new requirements or changes, even late in the process. This is crucial in today’s fast-paced tech environment.
• Customer-Centric Approach: Agile SDLC emphasizes regular feedback from stakeholders, ensuring that the final product aligns closely with user needs and expectations.
• Reduced Project Risks: By delivering in small, manageable increments and allowing for constant evaluation, Agile helps identify and address issues early, lowering overall project risk.
• Faster Decision-Making: Agile promotes continuous collaboration between cross-functional teams, enabling faster, more informed decision-making.

Research shows that Agile significantly enhances project outcomes. According to the Standish Group’s Chaos Report, Agile projects have a 28% higher success rate than traditional methods, the 15th State of Agile Report reveals that 64% of organizations report improved team productivity and 60% experience faster time-to-market through Agile practices .

Types of Agile SDLC Model

Each Agile model shares core Agile values, though their specific practices and structures vary. Some popular Agile SDLC models are listed below –

• Crystal Agile Methodology: Crystal focuses on effective team communication and adaptability, considering the human aspects essential for successful development. It’s ideal for projects with high uncertainty and frequent requirement changes.
  Example: A startup building a new product that may pivot based on early user feedback can benefit from Crystal’s flexible, people-focused approach.
• Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM): DSDM is designed for projects with moderate to high uncertainty, offering clear roles and governance for quick delivery.
  Example: Enterprises working on complex systems, like internal HR platforms, benefit from DSDM’s structured roles and short time frames.
• Feature-Driven Development (FDD): FDD focuses on creating a list of features and using iterative feature design and development to meet project goals.
  Example: Suitable for large-scale projects with specific, detailed requirements, like e-commerce websites that need frequent updates to meet customer expectations.
• Scrum: Scrum is a widely used framework ideal for managing complex projects through iterative sprints. It includes roles such as the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team to facilitate project success.
  Example: Scrum is ideal for software teams building complex applications, such as mobile apps, where continuous feedback and updates are essential.
• Extreme Programming (XP): XP emphasizes practices like pair programming, continuous integration, and test-driven development to adapt to frequent changes.
  Example: Used in high-uncertainty projects, like financial tech applications, where rapid adaptation to regulatory changes and new user needs is critical.
• Lean Development: Lean aims to streamline the process by eliminating waste and optimizing value, inspired by lean manufacturing principles.
  Example: Lean is beneficial in SaaS product development, where fast, efficient delivery and constant refinement are key to staying competitive.
• Unified Process (UP): UP combines iterative development with elements of both Agile and Waterfall, suited for projects needing a balanced approach.
  Example: Unified Process is useful in regulated industries, like healthcare software, where strict requirements exist but incremental progress is also needed.

Difference Phases of Agile Development

The Agile SDLC is broken down into six key phases, each designed to drive continuous collaboration, feedback, and improvement throughout the software development process. These phases help ensure that projects are adaptable, customer-focused, and delivered efficiently.

1. Concept
2. Inception
3. Iteration
4. Testing
5. Production
6. Review/Maintenance

1. Concept

• What it does: This phase defines the project’s overall goals, vision, and feasibility. It includes gathering high-level requirements and determining the project’s scope.
• Stakeholders: Project stakeholders, including product owners, business analysts, and initial project team members.
• Example: For an e-commerce startup, the Concept phase involves understanding the need for a platform, identifying key user personas, and setting broad goals, like enabling easy shopping and integration with payment systems.

2. Inception

• What it does: Inception focuses on refining the project’s scope, setting initial priorities, and planning how the team will approach the project. It also outlines the resources and tools needed.
• Stakeholders: Product owners, Scrum Masters, development teams, and UX/UI designers.
• Example: The e-commerce project team decides on the tech stack, platform requirements, and design direction. They create a product backlog that includes features like user registration, product catalog, and checkout.

3. Iteration

• What it does: This phase involves the actual development work, where the project is broken down into sprints or iterations. Features are developed, and user stories are implemented based on priority.
• Stakeholders: Development team, product owners, Scrum Master, QA engineers.
• Example: The team starts building the product’s core features, such as creating a product page and user account system, and releases them in iterations, incorporating feedback from the product owner after each sprint.

4. Testing

• What it does: In the Testing phase, the product undergoes various testing processes, including functional testing, integration testing, and user acceptance testing (UAT). It ensures that the software meets the requirements and quality standards.
• Stakeholders: QA team, developers, product owners.
• Example: The e-commerce platform undergoes testing of features like the shopping cart, payment gateway, and search function to ensure they work as expected and are free from bugs.

5. Production

• What it does: This phase involves deploying the software into a live environment for end users to access and use. The focus is on ensuring smooth deployment and monitoring performance.
• Stakeholders: Development team, operations team, product owners.
• Example: The e-commerce platform is launched to the public, with users able to browse products, make purchases, and complete transactions. The team monitors performance for any issues like site load times or payment processing errors.

6. Review/Maintenance

• What it does: After the software is in production, it enters the review and maintenance phase, where feedback is collected, bugs are fixed, and updates or new features are added.
• Stakeholders: Product owners, development team, customer support.
• Example: Post-launch, the e-commerce site receives customer feedback about the checkout process, prompting the team to make adjustments. Maintenance tasks include bug fixes and the addition of seasonal promotions.

How the Agile Manifesto led to the evolution of the Agile SDLC

The Agile Manifesto, published in 2001, reshaped software development by promoting flexibility, collaboration, and customer satisfaction. These core values shifted the focus from traditional, rigid methodologies to more adaptive, iterative processes in the Agile SDLC.

• People over processes: Agile emphasizes teamwork and collaboration, moving away from rigid processes and tools. This fosters closer collaboration within cross-functional teams.
• Working software over documentation: Instead of focusing on extensive documentation, Agile prioritizes delivering working software in short cycles, speeding up development.
• Customer collaboration over contracts: Agile encourages continuous feedback from customers, ensuring the product evolves to meet real needs, rather than sticking to fixed contract terms.
• Embracing change over sticking to a plan: Agile welcomes changes in requirements even late in the process, making the product more adaptable to shifting customer demands.

How to implement an Agile SDLC

Implementing an Agile SDLC can streamline your development process, improve collaboration, and enhance adaptability. Follow these steps to ensure a smooth transition and effective Agile workflow:

Step 1: Gain Buy-In

Ensure everyone involved, from developers to key stakeholders, is on board with adopting Agile. Tools like monday dev can facilitate communication and keep everyone aligned.

Step 2: Commit to Core Agile Principles

Familiarize your team with the 12 principles in the Agile manifesto to guide your development mindset and decision-making.

Step 3: Pick the Best Agile Framework

Choose the right Agile framework based on your team’s goals and needs:

• Scrum for speed and adaptability
• Kanban for a visual workflow
• ScrumBan for a combination of both
• SAFe for managing large-scale projects

Step 4: Fill and Optimize the Product Backlog

Work with product owners and stakeholders to create a prioritized product backlog. Keep everyone updated on changes in real-time.

Step 5: Plan the Sprint

Meet with the team to review the backlog and prioritize features, stories, and bugs for the upcoming sprint. Ensure a clear task ownership structure with deadlines.

Step 6: Hold Daily Meetings

Conduct daily standups to discuss progress, goals for the day, and any roadblocks. This keeps everyone on track and ensures accountability.

Step 7: Test the Iteration with Stakeholders

After completing the sprint, review the product with key stakeholders. Address any feedback in the next sprint for continuous improvement.

Step 8: Review and Evaluate

After each sprint, assess progress and adjust goals or backlog priorities as necessary to improve future iterations and ensure alignment with customer needs.

Agile vs Traditional SDLC Models

The comparison between Agile and traditional SDLC models highlights the differences in approach, flexibility, and responsiveness to change. While traditional methods like Waterfall follow a linear, structured path, Agile promotes flexibility, collaboration, and iterative development.

Benefits of Agile SDLC

The Agile Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) enhances software development by promoting flexibility, quality, and speed.

• Increased Flexibility: Agile SDLC adapts to changes in project requirements and market demands, allowing teams to refine and adjust the scope as they progress. This flexibility keeps the final product competitive and aligned with evolving customer needs.
• Improved Product Quality: By focusing on continuous integration and regular testing, Agile ensures that issues are identified and resolved early. This proactive quality control enhances the software’s performance, reliability, and customer satisfaction.
• Faster Response to Changes: The iterative nature of Agile allows for quick adjustments based on customer feedback, market trends, or technological shifts, helping teams stay agile in a fast-paced environment.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Regular interactions, including daily stand-ups and sprint reviews, foster better communication and alignment within teams and with stakeholders. This collaborative atmosphere boosts transparency and accountability, leading to stronger project outcomes.
• Better Customer Alignment: Agile emphasizes ongoing customer collaboration throughout development, ensuring the end product aligns closely with customer expectations and needs.
• Reduced Risk: Agile’s frequent releases and reviews allow for regular course corrections, minimizing the risk of major setbacks late in the project and increasing the likelihood of successful delivery.

Limitations of Agile SDLC

Despite its potential benefits, Agile is not for everyone. Therefore, it is essential to understand the disadvantages of Agile methodology. In light of this, the following are five major disadvantages of Agile.

1. Poor resource allocation: Because Agile is predicated on the notion that teams won’t know what their end result (or even a few cycles of delivery down the road) will look like from day one, it’s difficult to predict cost, time, and resources at the outset of a project (and this difficulty increases as projects become larger and more complex).
2. Limited documentation: In Agile, documentation occurs throughout a project and frequently “just in time” for constructing the output, as opposed to at the outset. Consequently, it becomes less specific and is frequently pushed to the back burner.
3. Dispersed output: Incremental delivery may aid in bringing products to market more quickly, but it is a major drawback of Agile methodology. When teams focus on each component in separate cycles, the final product is frequently fragmented, as opposed to a unified whole.
4. No finite conclusion: Due to the fact that Agile requires minimal planning at the outset, it is simple to deliver new, unanticipated functionality. In addition, it implies that initiatives have no definitive conclusion because the “final product” is never clearly defined.
5. Difficult measurement: Because Agile delivers in increments, tracking progress necessitates a cross-cycle perspective. And because of the “see-as-you-go” nature, you cannot establish many KPIs at the outset of the project. This lengthy game makes it difficult to measure progress.

Scrum vs Agile SDLC: Comparison

Scrum in Agile is a method that enables software development teams to focus on delivering business value in the shortest time possible by inspecting functioning software repeatedly and rapidly. Scrum Framework typically addresses the fact that requirements are susceptible to change or are typically unknown at the outset of a project.

Talk to an Expert

Why Implement Agile SDLC with BrowserStack

Implementing Agile SDLC with BrowserStack, particularly leveraging BrowserStack Automate and BrowserStack Test Management tools, can significantly enhance the software development and testing processes.

These tools should be integrated into an Agile workflow because :

1. BrowserStack Automate plays a crucial role in supporting Agile methodologies by enabling rapid, reliable, and scalable automated testing.
2. BrowserStack Automate integrates seamlessly with popular CI/CD tools, allowing teams to:

• Run automated tests as part of their build pipeline
• Perform cross-browser and cross-device testing on every code commit
• Quickly identify and fix issues before they reach production

3. With BrowserStack Automate, teams can run hundreds of tests concurrently across multiple browser and device combinations through Parallel Testing.
4. BrowserStack Automate provides access to a wide range of real mobile devices and desktop browsers. This is important because it :

• Ensures that applications work correctly on actual user devices
• Helps in identifying and addressing device-specific issues early in the development cycle
• Supports the Agile goal of delivering high-quality, user-centric software

5. BrowserStack’s Test Management tools complement the Automate features and further support Agile practices through Centralized Test Planning and Execution, Comprehensive Reporting, and Integration with popular Agile Tools

Effectively Implementing Agile SDLC with BrowserStack

To effectively implement Agile SDLC using BrowserStack tools, organizations should follow these key strategies:

1. Early Integration of Automated Testing: Setting up BrowserStack Automate in the CI/CD pipeline from the project’s inception is crucial. This early integration allows teams to start running automated tests as soon as code is committed, ensuring that issues are caught and addressed quickly
2. Adoption of Shift-Left Approach: Leveraging BrowserStack’s real device testing capabilities enables teams to identify and address issues earlier in the development cycle.
3. Implementation of Continuous Testing: Utilizing BrowserStack Automate’s parallel testing capabilities allows teams to run comprehensive test suites frequently. This continuous testing approach ensures that all aspects of the software are thoroughly tested throughout the development process
4. Test Management for Sprint Planning: BrowserStack’s Test Management tools can be effectively used to plan and track testing activities within sprint cycles. This helps in aligning testing efforts with sprint goals and ensures that all necessary tests are completed within the sprint timeframe
5. Continuous Improvement and Collaboration: The centralized test management platform provided by BrowserStack can be leveraged to improve communication between developers, testers, and other stakeholders. Teams should use the insights gained from BrowserStack’s comprehensive reporting to continuously refine their testing strategy and overall development process. This iterative approach allows for ongoing improvements in efficiency and effectiveness

Try BrowserStack Now

Conclusion

As the conventional software development methods lose market share, an increasing number of organisations are employing Agile methodologies to increase the efficiency and structure of cross-team collaborations. Percy, Automate, and Live are highly effective and adaptable platforms from BrowserStack that can help you surmount Agile software development obstacles. 

While an organisation embraces Agile, BrowserStack Live for Teams could be a highly effective platform for cross-browser testing and access to over 3500+ real desktops.