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Agile Development and Software Licensing: What's the Link?

By Michelle Amodio, TMCnet Contributor

The term “agile” by definition means to be “able to move quickly and easily.” In terms of software, the idea of agile development simply means that approaches to software development help businesses respond to unpredictability. Basically, agile development is a different way of managing IT development teams and projects.

Is it all just a tech buzz term or something that has actually worked? According to Flexera Software, no one really knows. Rather, Flexera reported that, according to Ken Schwaber, co-founder of Scrum, “none of us know the results.”

There has been an ever-increasing volume of success stories, where companies have dramatically improved the success and performance of their IT development teams and projects.  This has caused agile to be widely adopted across a variety of industries, including media and technology, large corporates, and even government.

An agile approach provides a unique opportunity for clients to be involved throughout the project, from prioritizing features to iteration planning and review sessions to frequent software builds containing new features. Agile (News - Alert) also means new features are delivered quickly and frequently, with a high level of predictability.

Software licensing solutions actually provide automated updates. Solutions like Flexera Software’s FlexNet Connect offers application producers the most efficient way to provide end-users with the latest software updates and to obtain valuable insight on their product use. It helps to keep the client involved, much like agile development.

By focusing features on the needs of real customers, each feature incrementally delivers value, not just an IT component.

Agile is a powerful tool for software development, not only providing benefits to the development team, but also providing a number of important business benefits to the client.

Software licensing solutions can also better help obtain customer insight, target marketing campaigns, and improve overall customer communication?