Lean, agile and scrum – which approach will be the best for your app development?

The moment you decide that your project needs to be taken from the idea phase into the development phase is actually…one of the hardest moments. It is the time to face reality and answer many difficult questions about the process of development. In the past, many incredible ideas failed just because they were carried out in the wrong way.
At AppTailors, we believe that having the right process is a guarantee of effectiveness and high quality in app development. That’s why we are always working on the improvements of our internal processes. Like many development teams, we love Lean, Agile and Scrum. Those words took our world by storm in the last few years. These approaches are especially popular in the IT environment but can be used in almost every product or service development, as well as in every industry.
Nowadays, still not everyone understands what those words mean, how to implement them in your product development and in which way they can influence your project. That’s why we prepared this guide – to explain everything, to answer all your possible questions and describe in more details about the most popular approaches in mobile or web app development.
| Lean software development – what does it mean?
Lean management philosophy was developed and introduced by Toyota, based on their practices and experience in creating effective processes of automotive manufacturing. The main purpose of lean methodology is to reduce the risk and waste with scaling the value and to improve the end-user experience. Later, this methodology of physical product development was translated into the development of other things, like software development for example and gained very high popularity in this industry as it is a guarantee of fast and good results. Lean is a pillar of Agile.
| There are five principles of lean product development:
1. Defining value
By using quantitative and qualitative techniques like interviews, statistics etc., you are able to discover what will be the most valuable asset for your customer and what they will pay for;
2. Mapping streams
Everything that is not adding the value should be treated as waste – that’s why it is important to map every activity that brings value to your customer;
3. Building a production flow
Your process should run smoothly without any interruptions or delays;
4. Streamlining inventory
Inventory might be your biggest waste, so you have to make sure that you only have enough materials or information to keep the smooth workflow;
5. Continuously improving products
That’s probably the most important principle, as the work to improve your process never ends; your company should learn from every cycle and every employee should strive towards perfection;
| Lean software development – benefits
| Lean software development – cons
| Agile software development – what does it mean?
Agile is a product building philosophy. It helps you to build your product step-by-step, with priorities, milestones, and overall simplicity. During the development you should be focused on customers, test each of your steps and implement changes if tests say that they are needed. The biggest advantage of agile methodology is the fact that agile lets you develop your product in more flexible ways and lets you adapt faster. Also, you can expect faster results.
You can look for Agile origins in the Agile Manifesto, created by the developers tired of non-effective development methods. In general, agile methods are focused on three areas:
- customer focus
- iterations
- testing and validation
| Agile software development – advantages
| Agile software development – disadvantages
| Scrum framework
Agile and Lean are methodologies, Scrum is a framework. What does it mean? Scrum is a set of practices, roles, events, artifacts, and rules. It is perfect for the agile product development documentation. It can be understood as a tool or evolution for both previously explained methods.
| Scrum framework – benefits
| Scrum framework – cons
| Summary
At AppTailors we believe in presentation and transparency – that’s why we love to work with all described methods. Only the right approach can guarantee that your app will be released without wasting any precious resources like time, money or skill.
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