A Primer on Agile Software Development, Part 1

In the first part of this two-part series, the speaker, Jeff Patton, discusses the origins of agile software development during a lecture. He claims that agile software development is “nothing new,” and that it has actually been around for some time in various forms. He then discusses some points that were created during the time that agile development was first being coined and recognized as a legitimate development tool. Many of these points originated in the Agile Development Manifesto, which was created in 2001.

Some examples that he mentioned could be best described as characteristics of a good software development process. Patton also discusses some of the points that led to agile’s rise to predominance, many of which predated the method itself. The combination of all of these factors eventually gave way to the formation of the agile methodology.

In the video, Patton keenly differentiates between agile development as a method and as a quality. The latter, he says, shows that the methodology has been around for some time.