The Agile life cycle will vary slightly depending on the project management methodology chosen by a team. For example, Scrum teams work in short time periods known as sprints, which are similar to iterations. They also have clearly defined roles, such as Scrum master. On the other hand, Kanban teams have more of a continuous flow with no required roles.

The agile software development life cycle is the structured series of stages that a product goes through as it moves from beginning to end. The Agile software development life cycle consists of 6 phases. Let’s examine each of these Agile phases in more detail.

A product owner will determine the scope of their project. If there are numerous projects, they will prioritize the most important ones. The product owner will discuss key requirements with a client and prepare documentation to outline them, including what features will be supported and the proposed end results.

It is advisable to keep the requirements to a minimum as they can be added to in later stages. In the concept stage, the product owner will also estimate the time and cost of potential projects.

Once the concept is outlined, it is time to build the software development team. A product owner will check their colleagues’ availability and pick the best people for the project while also providing them with the necessary tools and resources.

The inception stage involves further input from stakeholders to fully flesh out the requirements on a diagram and determine the product functionality. Regular check-ins will help to ensure that all requirements are built into the design process.

Next up is the iteration phase, also referred to as construction. The developers will work with UX designers to combine all product requirements and customer feedback, turning the design into code.

Additional features and tweaks can be added in later iterations. This stage is a cornerstone of Agile software development, enabling developers to create working software quickly and make improvements to satisfy the client. The goal is to build the bare functionality of the product by the end of the first iteration or sprint.

The product is almost ready for release. But first, the quality assurance team needs to perform some tests to ensure the software platform is fully functional. User training will also take place during this phase, which will require more documentation.

When all of this is complete, the product’s final iteration can then be released into production. These Agile team members will test the system to ensure the code is clean — if potential bugs or defects are detected, the developers will address them swiftly.

The software will now be fully deployed and made available to customers. This action moves it into the maintenance phase. Over time, new iterations can take place to refresh the existing product with upgrades and additional features.

During this phase, the software development team will provide ongoing support to keep the system running smoothly and resolve any new bugs. They will also be on hand to offer additional training to users and ensure they know how to use the product.

The software development team will first notify users that the software is being retired. If there is a replacement, the users will be migrated to the new system.

There are two reasons why a product will enter the retirement phase: either it is being replaced with new software, or the system itself has become obsolete or incompatible with the organization over time.