We asked Nick McKenna, who delivers our Agile training, to tell us more about Agile and how it might help your business. Here's what he had to say.

Agile software development is all about:

• creating visibility within an organisation
• accepting and embracing change
• creating great client relationships
• delivering quality software at predictable intervals
• creating great team relationships

I cannot overstate how great Agile has been for providing our own management team with up to the minute, accurate information about project progress. We have achieved this using decidedly low-tech solutions such as white boards, index cards etc. Rather than investing in expensive and inflexible project management software, we have invested in the training and development of our team! We have also learned to embrace change. We do not feel it is reasonable to expect our (non-technical) customers to understand software development, and so we EXPECT them to change their minds. This leads to development of the software that they need rather than the software they originally asked for. Embracing change goes hand in hand with delivering software at predictable intervals. We like to get our software in front of clients within a few days of project kick off and then at least once per week thereafter. This gives the client confidence that development is progressing and also gives the client the opportunity to review the features and make changes in a structured manner as required. Agile also encourages lots of face to face communication with our clients. This facilitates a better relationship which increases our business levels and also helps us deal with difficult situations. The focus of Agile software development is firmly on quality. Over the years we have extensively automated our test systems using a variety of unit testing, acceptance testing, GUI testing etc tools. This has significantly driven down the testing cost and driven up the quality of the software. Although bugs are not unknown in our software, they are few and far between! Lastly, Agile promotes team working. Our team members frequently work together at the keyboard exploring requirements, technical solutions and options for solving problems. This means that no-one has to feel isolated when dealing with challenging problems. We all take responsibility for each others' work! Agile has transformed our business. We've worked with nti Leeds to develop the one day introduction course as a quick way for teams to understand the approaches of Agile and start to implement these for themselves. Take this course and see for yourself what a difference Agile can make for your business. Booking is easy - call us on 0113 812 1725 or email hello@ntileeds.co.uk January 2011 - Nick McKenna. Nick  is managing director of McKenna Consultants and a Certified Scrum Master. If you'd like to get involved with others who are passionate about Agile, why not come to the next meeting of Agile Yorkshire? Sponsored by nti Leeds, they meet every month here at Old Broadcasting House. More details on their web site    http://www.agileyorkshire.org/