If you are applying for a job as a software developer, you might see a lot of strange terms thrown around, like scrum or agility. Some of these words can be confusing if you are new to the industry, but we’re here to break things down and keep it simple.

Agility in the context of software development refers to your ability to respond and adopt to change. It emphasizes flexibility, adaptability, and collaboration throughout the development process. It means you are not rigid in requirements, and try to get things moving to produce valuable working software as quickly as possible. Here are five examples to help clarify:

1. Iterative Development: Agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban promote iterative development, where software is built incrementally in small, manageable chunks. These chunks are usually two or four week sprints. This allows for frequent feedback and the ability to adjust priorities or requirements based on changing needs. If you are working on a long-running project where requirements get fleshed out in the initial phase, and are never changed, then you are not working in an agile environment.
2. Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Software development teams use CI/CD practices to automate the process of integrating code changes into a shared repository and deploying them to production environments. They do this quickly and very frequently. Facebook is legendary for having developers deploy code on their first day. We’ve seen blog posts where people claim teams push updates to production every single working day. Major changes happen once or twice a week. This is the goal of CI/CD: quick delivery of new features and bug fixes while maintaining software quality.
3. Adaptive Planning: Agile teams prioritize adaptive planning over rigid, detailed plans. They use techniques like user stories, backlog refinement, and sprint planning to continuously assess and adjust their development priorities based on customer feedback, market dynamics, or evolving business goals. They do not write giant requirement Word documents and then follow those requirements for months on end.
4. Cross-Functional Teams: Agile organizations typically organize into cross-functional teams comprising members with different skills, such as developers, testers, designers, and product owners. These teams collaborate closely, breaking down silos and accelerating decision-making and problem-solving. Often, agile teams will include all of these members in their daily huddle.
5. Customer Collaboration and Feedback: Agility also means that you have close collaboration with customers. You should look for ways to get feedback early and often, incorporating it into the product incrementally to ensure that the delivered software meets the evolving needs and expectations of the users.

Agility is critical for any company to produce meaningful results. When you are interviewing for a job as a software developer, you should emphasize how you can respond well to change and look for feedback loops to ensure you are writing code that actually makes a difference.