An Agile Developer is What? What is Different About the Role?

Since the position of an Agile Developer is not commonly understood, many developers may find it challenging to make the switch.

A developer might be able to sit in their cube while wearing a headset and listening to music in a classic plan-driven environment (also known as "Waterfall"). Additionally, he or she might just create code while being mostly cut off from the outside world. In a really Agile setting, that is not feasible.

Agile Developer Role

The role of a developer in an Agile environment is significantly broader than that and includes:

Area

Task/Project Management

Additional Responsibility

Taking responsibility for estimating, planning, and managing all of his/her own tasks and reporting on progress. This role is essentially what a project manager might do on a very small scale.

Area

Effective Teamwork

Additional Responsibility

Collaborating closely with all the other members of the team to take shared responsibility for the overall efforts that the team has committed to. This role is also similar to what a project manager might do but rather than being done by a single person with the title of “Project Manager”, the responsibility is distributed among all members of the team.

Area

Software Quality

Additional Responsibility

Taking responsibility for the quality of the software the developer produces.

Area

Understanding User Needs

Additional Responsibility

Interacting with users as necessary to clarify requirements.

Developers will typically not be given a well-defined set of requirements. More often, the developer will get some general user stories that are intended to be a “placeholder for conversation” and the developer will be expected to interact with the Product Owner and users as necessary to better define what is needed. This is essentially equivalent to a Business Analyst role on a very small scale.

Overall Summary

The role of a developer in an Agile environment is significantly different. Developers have additional responsibilities in an Agile environment that go beyond simply writing code. I recently was in a situation where the development team was completing tasks required for a sprint, but the overall stories were not being completed. The team allocated development tasks to individual developers and also allocated overall responsibility for each story to individual developers. However, for several sprints, the development tasks were completed but a number of the stories were not.

A developer who takes responsibility for stories in a sprint needs to be responsible for:

• Understanding the business purpose of the story and defining and analyzing possible alternative ways of satisfying the business purpose of the story
• Planning and estimating development tasks with other developers that are required to fulfill the story
• Working directly with the Product Owner to clarify and further define the details of how the story should be implemented
• Providing guidance to other developers as necessary who are engaged in development tasks associated with the story
• Taking overall responsibility for “shepherding” the story through the process all the way to (and including) UAT. The developer responsible for the story should lead the presentation of the completed story to the Product Owner in UAT (or Sprint Review)

‍

‍

Ready to ace your exams? Access our top-notch practice exams for optimal results!

https://prepzo.com/categories/business/agile

‍