Current Software Industry Scenario

Software engineering has undergone a significant amount of changes since its early inception 3-4 decades back. Agile Swarming and Its functioning and working principle has enhanced massively, all thanks to the rapid-paced development in the IT industry.

The traditional methodology of waterfall works in a more rigid way where products are intended to be delivered to clients with a heck lot of time consumption, maybe in a year or so. On the other hand, Agile revolutionised the software industry and promised to supply services in a very short amount of time.

From top multinational companies to well-funded startups, Agile Swarming Methodology has been the go-to solution banishing the traditional outdated ideologies that failed to cope up with the cumbersome demands. With this skyrocketing boom of Agile in the market, the door for many professionals bestowed with Agile knowledge has opened to an ocean full of organisations. 

What The Heck is that “SCRUM”?

As we advance into the more critical portions of the AGILE methodology and AGILE SWARMING, let’s have a quick lookup on SCRUM.

Scrum and Agile are commonly interchangeable terms among IT professionals. But to be precise, Scrum refers to one of the most common frameworks of Agile. 

• The ideology here it to break the large project into small chunks of work called “sprints”
• Agile scrum methodology is a project management system that relies on incremental development. The goal of each sprint is to build the most important features first and come out with a potentially deliverable product(PDP).
• Agile principles are based on presentation of the sprints several times and fetch feedback from the stakeholders to re-develop in subsequent iterations.

For Agile teams to be working efficiently, the main quality of the Scrum Team is flexibility and adaptability where team members specialise in multiple domains delivering far better project management than Waterfall models.

But that’s where a new terminology comes into the picture, in which the Scrum team or the company team solely focuses on completing one task – known as Swarming.

This article covers the particulars of Agile Swarming with all its pros and cons in modern SDLC processes.

Agile Swarming

“Agile swarming takes place when multiple team members with available time and appropriate skill sets all direct their attention to work together on one feature or user story, i.e., they swarm the task until it is complete.”

Agile Swarming is an efficient process for fast moving projects. The goal is to deliver high quality products in the least amount of time possible to the customer. Swarming is closely related to scrum. Unlike in ordinary scrum, where developers work remotely, agile scrum absolutely curbs off unsynchronised work and focuses on working on a certain user feature.

The team should select appropriate items from the product backlog on priority-basis and suitable team members as well.

Let’s take an example of an agile swarming scenario.

Suppose in a company, the IT system has collapsed suddenly. In order to fix the issue, cross-collaboration among various teams of the organisation is facilitated. The marketing team gets in touch with IT to relay social media visitors and others. Similarly, the sales team postpones and delays clients of the company till the bug gets fixed.

Thus Swarming efficiently and quickly resolves issues inside a company of big stature by fluidity in the functioning of all the departments of the MNC.

Advantages of Agile Swarming

• Time Saving
• Encourages collaboration in the Agile team and serves as a practice to resolve teamwork related issues
• Increased quality of working

Disadvantages of Agile Swarming

• Disorganisation inside the team as there’s a proverb in saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth”
• Can lead to cross team conflict
• Swarming is not suitable for every task as resources should be well dispersed and teams should be goal-focused not task-focused.