Last week, I introduced the subject of Agile software development, a methodology that enables rapid software development through a major shift in the way that software is designed and developed. Agile has had its successes and failures, but after spending some time analyzing the methodology, I feel that it has real merit (and, being a former software developer, I can clearly appreciate its benefits). There are also real advantages for companies that outsource development work to use this methodology.

Yesterday, I spent some time with the founders of Rally Development, a leading supplier of Agile coaching services and technologies. Besides the Agile connection, I am also interested in Rally because it uses the "software as a service" (SaaS) model (similar to Salesforce.com) and provides an outsourced service to its customers.

Rally was founded in 2002 by former executives at Rational Software, BEA, and PVCS Tracker to provide the knowledge, coaching and tooling needed to succeed with Agile development practices. The company supports three major trends in the way that software is defined, developed, and delivered:

* Agile development - competitive pressure to respond faster to rapid changes in customer needs.
* Distributed development - highly dispersed development teams, with offshore and "follow the sun" practices becoming commonplace.
* Web services and the real-time enterprise - new standards for software usage and deployment.

Rally's slogan does a good job of summarizing what Agile is all about: "deliver early, deliver often." One benefit of Agile development is its focus on producing small, iterative advancements of a software product. This allows companies that use Agile to increase the frequency of release cycles, thereby responding to changing customer needs and new opportunities much more quickly. A graphic example of Agile may be found on Rally's own development roadmap: the company uses an eight-week (!) release cycle, introducing major new functionality every two months.

As an industry analyst, I spend a lot of time listening to vendor presentations, and I can safely say that I have never encountered an accelerated roadmap like Rally's before - most vendors that I deal with work on six month or yearly release cycles. This acceleration is also due to the SaaS delivery mechanism, as new functionality is deployed very quickly without requiring customers to install and migrate to a new release. Think about that from a competitive perspective; if company A and company B are close competitors, and company A can bring new features to market three to six times faster than company B, they have a real competitive advantage.