Applying Agile Software Development Methodology in a Dynamic Business Environment

In a fast changing business environment, companies that can innovate better and faster, and respond quickly to customer’s requirements, will win. One of the most important industries of knowledge-based economy, by all means, is the software industry. In order to achieve business success and to innovate in the market, almost every large organization relies on software. The emergence of Web 2.0 and web-based services have changed radically the way of conducting business as well as the way of building applications. In a web service environment, software applications are becoming services that can be easily linked with other software components, and can provide faster and more productive communication between businesses and customers. The software development companies now need to release products and services more frequently, involve the user participation even as co-developers, and improve the product continuously by receiving real time feedback from the users. In such a dynamic and networked business environment, many companies are adopting Agile software development. There are many reasons for this: agile methods require continuous dialog between business and IT. Fast respond to change and meeting customer satisfactions through early and continuous delivery of the software is also the main goal of agile methodology. The purpose of this work is to find out what are the business benefits of agile methods, and how suitable or valuable is agile development methodology in developing dynamic applications in Web 2.0 service environment. This challenge will be approached as followed: define the Software Development Life Cycle and illustrate some development methodologies, define the Agile Manifesto to clarify the concept of agile software development and Scrum in particular, and discover and analyze the business benefits, agile change and risk management of agile development methods.