How does Agile handle changes in requirements?

Agile is a methodology commonly used in software development, this breaks the process into iterations and divides it among teams to reduce project delivery time. This methodology also involves the client in the development process by working on the feedback of the client after each iteration. A client always changes their requirements — they’ll want one feature today and may need another the next day. This is why one should be flexible in your requirements.

What is meant by requirement?

Requirement gathering is the first phase of the software development lifecycle. This includes the activities involving creating software specifications, creating a detailed plan, documentation, issue tracking, and project or product planning, including allocating the correct resources. Agile manages the evolving requirements during software development.

Advantages of Agile handling the changes in requirements:

• Adaptability: Agile teams practice iterative development, by which they plan and complete work in small pieces. In this way, the product is adaptable to changes in each iteration.
• Customer Satisfaction: The agile team demonstrates the prototype/software to the client after each iteration, and the feedback from the customer lays the foundation for the next iteration.
• Quality Assurance: Consistent work on client feedback improves the quality of the product. The product is as per the demand of the client.
• Predictable: Project managers find it simpler to evaluate team performance and allocate resources in accordance with these set durations (such as two weeks). Shorter iterations also make cost prediction easier than long-term projects, which streamlines the estimation process.
• Risk Management: The process of regular review/iterations ensures that the project risks are evaluated and managed in the next iteration. This way agile produces error-free products.

Disadvantages of Agile handling the changes in requirements:

• Resource management: In agile the development modifies with the feedback in each iteration resulting in new requirements from time to time.
• Lack of Documentation: Agile teams perform development in small user stories, so the documentation happens throughout the project and not at the beginning hence one who is familiar with the waterfall model believes that agile lacks proper documentation.
• Time management: All team members need to make room for daily scrum meetings and may find it difficult to manage time for meetings of different projects.
• Integration: The project is divided into user stories and is developed by different team members in parts, integrating the different features of software into one may introduce new errors.
• Delayed Delivery: Frequent changes during development result in delayed delivery of the product.

How does Agile handle changes in requirements?

1. Scrum meetings: Team members can talk about their work and any obstacles they encountered during these daily sessions, which are scheduled at the same time every day. In these scrum meetings, developers, team leads, and stakeholders can discuss the immediate effects of changing requirements on the project timeline and solicit comments from team members and management. Such data may include concerns and remarks about product requirements that may arise during the deployment stage.
2. Task Board: This lists the development into several phases. Every team member can see the status of the project requirements. Also marks the modifications with respect to dependencies.
3. Set priorities: The scrum master is in charge of managing the backlog. Either way, it’s a lot more transparent because everyone can have an impact on the priorities in the backlog, including stakeholders, customers, and the entire team.

Example of Agile handling the changes in requirements:

Publishing the article on geeks for geeks is a good example of agile. The pick section contains the title of the articles and also mentions the prerequisites and requirements (like sub-topics to be mentioned in the article) as the description. When the writer picks the article, he/she frames the content, may divide the article according to the sub-topics(save the iterations as revision) and submits the complete article for review.

The reviewer can be considered the client who checks the article and comments on the changes back to the author. Here the writer again modifies the content with respect to new requirements and submits it back before the deadline. The process of modification in the content of the article continues until the reviewer is satisfied with the content of the article. The writer updates the content as the reviewer mentions the requirement.

Conclusion :

The benefits of agile are well known and managing frequently changing requirements is cumbersome for newbies. The above practices will help in the efficient handling of changing requirements during agile.