Many new practices are seeing increased use across domains. It’s natural for managers and engineers working in these domains to want to adopt new approaches which potentially offer improvement to product quality and the efficiency of their teams.
One such example is Agile which is a family of software development methodologies and approaches that have seen a rise in usage over the past 20 years. The promise of Agile is to empower software development teams to deliver better work in an incremental and iterative way by focusing on short development periods known as ‘sprints’, to progressively build up software and react to feedback. This is in contrast to traditional waterfall or V-model development.
Many notable projects have been developed using Agile techniques. There are many variants of Agile software development methodologies, ranging from the humble Scrum to more-complex versions such as Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Its use in safety-related domains is somewhat controversial however, as many safety standards are developed with waterfall / V-model development in mind.
The IET Engineering Safety Policy Panel has produced a short flyer, highlighting the promises of Agile practices as well as considerations for the use of Agile in safety-related environments. This includes questions that organisations should ask when considering the adoption of Agile methodologies. To be clear this flyer isn’t intended to be detailed guidance – it is merely to present some of the key concepts and questions around the subject.
A further, long-form document will follow at a later date with detailed guidance. This will give organisations within the safety-related environment a deeper understanding of key questions, considerations, and activities to make the most effective use of Agile, as well as to highlight common pitfalls to avoid when adopting it.
We welcome all feedback and would be especially interested to hear from practitioners in this area (particularly from safety-related industries!) who want to assist in the development of the long-form guidance.
Download the flyer for free: Agile in a safety-related environment
Check out our related flyer: DevSecOps in a safety-related environment, which is also on EngX.