It is often said that agile software development and open source development are poles apart. Is it really true?

Agile software development done by Agile Software Development Companies, approaches stems from the interpretation of the agile manifesto. Agile Manifesto stresses four key principles.  

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools;
• Working software over comprehensive documentation;
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and.
• Responding to change over following a plan.

The first two principles is often contradictory to the basic idea of open source development done by Open Source Development Company.

The first principle of agile development stresses on the co-location and the importance of interpersonal interactions, whereas anyone, anywhere can make modifications to the software code. 

The second agile principle focuses on an effective working code over documentation, but since open source thrives on contributions by different people separated by time and distance, it requires documentation in order to track the changes involved in the project.

In spite of these differences, agile programming doesn’t have to be seen as contrast to open-source development. In reality, bringing these core tenets of Agile into open source development can result in a number of benefits.

Procedure Understanding

With the distributed nature of open source-projects, keeping order and focus is one of the taxing jobs for open-source maintainers. For those who are working on, knowing what to work on and to have a clear understanding of the guidelines for the project are equally important. Thus creating a simple process around the way the work is taken precedence and progress is tracking is crucial for every collaborator involved in the project. Incorporating a simple agile framework (like Scrum or Kanban) into the project helps collaborators to have a clear understanding of the process that the work has to go through in order to be assimilated into the project. 

Collaborator Visibility

Few things are more disagreeable to potential contributors than not being able to understand the status of the project and worth their while for a contributed effort.

Incorporating agile components into projects enables potential contributors with a quick look into the activity of any project, the issues that should be prioritized. 

Measuring Momentum and Improving Predictability 

Although the distributed nature of open source projects handled by companies involved in software development services in Dubai prevents them from working as fast as their commercial counterparts, it doesn’t necessarily restrict them from improving on their momentum and more predictable in their releases.

While it might not be sensible for certain open-source projects to assemble work into sprints, but there are other agile metrics if used correctly, can help projects measure and improvise momentum and release predictability.