I spry with my nimble eye...

The apocryphal story is that in February 2001, 17 software developers met at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah, to discuss lightweight development methods and went on to published the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development" to define the approach now known as agile software development.

Being a practising sceptic, I naturally didn't trust this version of events. My first thought is why they would talk shop at a ski resort of all places? You'd either be off piste or getting piste (said with a South African accent), or else being piste off that you are stuck with a bunch of blokes talking code when there are clearly better things to do.

That aside, one of the main benefits of using Agile are that you can realise business benefits quicker than with a traditional Waterfall approach.

This is due to the short iterations used in Agile, typically 1 - 4 weeks. If you have a project that can be made modular, where the business can realise some of the benefits after a short period of time, where the business and developers can work closely together, and the solution isn't mission critical, Agile should have a look in.

For instance, we have a project to overhaul our current manual method of closing matters. While the process can be quite extensive under certain circumstances, for 80% of matters, the process is straight forward. This will allow us to develop a solution that will deal with the majority of users. The remaining 20% will still benefit from the initial part of the process, and we'd look to deal with these matters as the next iteration begins, and so on and so on.

There are other immediate benefits of course; reducing the number of software bugs (through frequent testing) and increased team productivity (short iterations help provide the focus needed). Other benefits I can see happening is a greater buy-in from the process owner/champion and from the customer as well. Whether this happens or not I'll soon be finding out.

Now, where's my snowboard....