Agile Ventures developers provide their services for free in order to further develop their IT skills and contribute to the greater good. All Agile Ventures developers work on an ad-hoc, volunteer basis and offer no guarantees of providing an actual IT solution. From an organisation's perspective it is best to think of collaborating with Agile Ventures developers for the purpose of better understanding the nature of the IT challenges faced. In favourable circumstances this may lead to Agile Venture developers being able to help craft a solution, but this should not be an assumed outcome. Agile Ventures itself will make every effort to help connect developers and non-profits for their mutual benefit, but also provides no guarantees of particular forms or quality of IT solutions.
Both Agile Ventures as a community and individual Agile Ventures developers are committed to "Open Source" solutions. "Open Source" refers to the public visibility of the code for any solution on a code hosting service such as GitHub. "Open Source" refers only to the code, e.g. the Ruby, Python, JavaScript etc. that powers any solution. It does not refer to customer data, which can be secured when necessary. Agile Ventures also prefers an "Open Development" style in which all meetings with clients, planning meetings and programming sessions are recorded and made available on the AgileVentures website in order to achieve maximum transparency as to the development process. Naturally accommodations can be made for sensitive data, however Agile Ventures believes that a transparent process, including "Open Source" and "Open Development" supports mutual understanding on all sides, and provides valuable learning materials for all parties.
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Back in the mysts of 2011 a new breed of Massively Open Online Classes emerged. Elite universities made some Computer Science courses available for free with automatic grading of code assignments and certificates for completion. In 2012 UC Berkeley's Software as a Service was the first of these MOOCs focused on modern software engineering. Only the first half of the course was released, but there were tantalizing mentions of group projects. The second half of the course was first released to the public in fall 2012, however the project component was missing. The face to face UC Berkeley students built solutions for non-profit organizations with the skills they were learning in the course. Not so in the MOOC.
One MOOC student, Computer Science Professor Sam Joseph spearheaded the MOOC student community to run their own unofficial projects. This was initially organized via Skype group text chats and the course wiki. Then a Google site called "SaaSELLS projects" was born. All through 2013 the process and members evolved. The "LocalSupport" project was deployed, improved, and started to be noticed. The domain "agileprojects.org" was not available, but "agileventures.org" was, and so AgileVentures was born. Agile Ventures is now a registered UK Charity ID #1170963.
Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development & delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid & flexible response to change. It is a conceptual framework that promotes tight interaction with the customer throughout the development cycle. We believe that learning is most effective when it takes place with the support of a group of like minded learners devoted to making the world a better place.
In February 2001, 17 software developers met at the Snowbird, Utah resort, to discuss lightweight development methods. They published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development to define the approach now known as Agile Software Development. Some of the manifesto's authors formed the Agile Alliance, a non-profit organization that promotes software development according to the manifesto's values and principles.
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
- Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
- Working software over Comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
- Responding to change over Following a plan
- That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
The Agile Manifesto is based on twelve principles:
- Customer satisfaction by rapid delivery of useful software
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development
- Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
- Working software is the principal measure of progress
- Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
- Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
- Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
- Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
- Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential
- Self-organizing teams
- Regular adaptation to changing circumstances