Agile Development in the world of IT is a process designed to make app development easy with predictable results.

Agile software development is a defining set of principles that gives software developers tips and ideas on how to respond to unpredictability, find solutions and requirements that usually evolve during individual and team interactions.

The entire development and testing activities are concurrent, unlike the Waterfall model. The term “Agile” has been around for several years now, with newer and better tools presenting itself every year. In this article, we will discuss some of the best tools for effective agile development.

1. Jira Agile Jira, an issue and project tracking software, is originally from Atlassian. Over the years, more features have been added since its launch. It is easy to assign work collaboratively, where tasks are prioritized, and ideas shared as documents or email.

Thanks to its workflows, it is easy to manage different projects at a single time. It has an intuitive screen with a number of features like customizable queues, real time reporting to customers and automated request management.

Apart from that, Jira Agile allows for great product integration with other Atlassian tools like Stash enterprise, Git repository management and Bitbucket for unlimited private code responses. Right from project conception to launch, everything can be handled here. Jira Agile comes in several versions and the latest one conforms to the requests made by customers.

Companies like Square, Adobe, BNP Paribas, NASA, eBay, Cisco, LindkedIn, Salesforce, BMW use Jira Agile.

2. Activ Collab If you are looking for agile project management, collaboration, customization, budgeting, tracking, notifications, resource managements, task management, learning and support, issue tracking apart from collaborating with clients for transparency, you are looking at the right solution here.

Each user in Activ Collab has his or her own unique dashboard where one can see their own work. Activ Collab helps you to track your working time so you can bill your clients accordingly. Harvard University, NASA, Ogilvy, Intel, Adobe and Apple are some of the companies using Activ Collab.

3. Pivotal Tracker Pivotal Tracker is a tool designed by Pivotal Labs, a software development consultancy. As the tool can easily handle multiple projects, you would find this tool highly popular among users. The tool can be used for messaging, preparing and monitoring projects and creating turndown charts. Pivotal Tracker is well known for its feedback tools, making QA possible for all project undertakings.

Groupon, Sharethrough, GoSpotCheck, Accuweather are just a few of the companies that use Pivotal Tracker.

4. CA Technologies CA Technologies (Previously known as Rally) is a cloud-based solution that helps software companies through the entire software development process. The aim is to shorten development cycles through dedicated agile techniques while enabling the teams spread across the globe to collaborate with each other seamlessly.

The tool helps you to reallocate development resources to help grow your portfolio. Various editions of the software are available for on-premise use. CA Technologies acquired Rally for $480 million in May 2015.

Intel, Cognizant, Capgemini, Sol, Choice Hotels,Getty Images, GE are just a few of the big names that use CA Technologies.

5. SprintGround If you are not quite happy with the way your agile development is shaping up, then consider SprintGround. It helps developers to parse out projects and versions and manage releases. There is a specific framework in SprintGround that allows you to look at feature requests, customer requests and suggestions.

Bug tracking functionality is another feature of SprintGround. It is the best option for customer-driven product development as it is integrated with several traditional Scrum functions. Stacker, Croz Desk, and iT Meester use SprintGround

6. Aha! Quite an interesting name for an agile development software! Aha! calls itself the world’s first product roadmap software that would help developers plan their business by shortening product cycles and improving user ranking. The best thing about Aha! is that you can integrate it with the applications that you already use.

Many of the big names are already users of Aha! like GitHub, Trello, Dropbox, Visual Studio, Google Apps and HipChat

7. Yodiz Yodiz is an agile management platform that is easy to use, customizable when you want to plan and track several teams at one time.

Some of the best features of Yodiz are:

Product Backlog, where you can plan your backlog management through an online repository Sprints to help visualize, schedule and plan your sprints Releases to help you assign and prioritize the various functionalities and their releases Epics to help you channel your business requirements to a particular goal Real time collaboration with all the members of the team and so on Companies using Yodiz include Associated Press or AP, Checkout.com, Team Elena, Nokia, Satmetrix

Wrapping Up The best bet of agile development would be for small projects, which can be implemented quickly, because errors can be fixed quickly. As the development process with agile method is iterative, a project can be executed in shorter time frames.

We hope this article has brought some of the important tools in Agile product development. Of course, there are plenty more out there, so you need to find your best option, choosing the one that suits your requirements.

In this article we will take a look at 15 jQuery techniques which will be useful for your effective use of the library. We will start with a few tips about performance and continue with short introductions to some of the library’s more obscure features.

1) Use the Latest Version of jQuery With all the innovation taking place in the jQuery project, one of the easiest ways to improve the performance of your web site is to simply use the latest version of jQuery. Every release of the library introduces optimizations and bug fixes, and most of the time upgrading involves only changing a script tag.

You can even include jQuery directly from Google’s servers, which provide free CDN hosting for a number of JavaScript libraries.

The latter example will include the latest 1.6.x version automatically as it becomes available, but as pointed out on css-tricks, it is cached only for an hour, so you better not use it in production environments.

2) Keep Selectors Simple Up until recently, retrieving DOM elements with jQuery was a finely choreographed combination of parsing selector strings, JavaScript loops and inbuilt APIs like getElementById(), getElementsByTagName() and getElementsByClassName(). But now, all major browsers support querySelectorAll(), which understands CSS query selectors and brings a significant performance gain.

However, you should still try to optimize the way you retrieve elements. Not to mention that a lot of users still use older browsers that force jQuery into traversing the DOM tree, which is slow. $(‘li[data-selected=”true”] a’) // Fancy, but slow $(‘li.selected a’) // Better $(‘#elem’) // Best Selecting by id is the fastest. If you need to select by class name, prefix it with a tag – $(‘li.selected’). These optimizations mainly affect older browsers and mobile devices. Accessing the DOM will always be the slowest part of every JavaScript application, so minimizing it is beneficial. One of the ways to do this, is to cache the results that jQuery gives you. The variable you choose will hold a jQuery object, which you can access later in your script. var buttons = $(‘#navigation a.button’); // Some prefer prefixing their jQuery variables with $: var $buttons = $(‘#navigation a.button’); Another thing worth noting, is that jQuery gives you a large number of additional selectors for convenience, such as :visible, :hidden, :animated and more, which are not valid CSS3 selectors. The result is that if you use them the library cannot utilize querySelectorAll(). To remedy the situation, you can first select the elements you want to work with, and later filter them, like this: $(‘a.button:animated’); // Does not use querySelectorAll() $(‘a.button’).filter(‘:animated’); // Uses it The results of the above are the same, with the exception that the second example is faster.

3) jQuery Objects as Arrays The result of running a selector is a jQuery object. However, the library makes it appear as if you are working with an array by defining index elements and a length. // Selecting all the navigation buttons: var buttons = $(‘#navigation a.button’); // We can loop though the collection: for(var i=0;i console.log(buttons[i]); // A DOM element, not a jQuery object } // We can even slice it: var firstFour = buttons.slice(0,4); If performance is what you are after, using a simple for (or a while) loop instead of $.each(), can make your code several times faster. Checking the length is also the only way to determine whether your collection contains any elements. if(buttons){ // This is always true // Do something } if(buttons.length){ // True only if buttons contains elements // Do something }

4) The Selector Property jQuery provides a property which contains the selector that was used to start the chain. $(‘#container li:first-child’).selector // #container li:first-child $(‘#container li’).filter(‘:first-child’).selector // #container li.filter(:first-child) Although the examples above target the same element, the selectors are quite different. The second one is actually invalid – you can’t use it as the basis of a new jQuery object. It only shows that the filter method was used to narrow down the collection.

5) Create an Empty jQuery Object Creating a new jQuery object can bring significant overhead. Sometimes, you might need to create an empty object, and fill it in with the add() method later. var container = $([]); container.add(another_element); This is also the basis for the quickEach() method that you can use as a faster alternative to the default each().

6) Select a Random Element As I mentioned above, jQuery adds its own selection filters. As with everything else in the library, you can also create your own. To do this simply add a new function to the $.expr[‘:’] object. One awesome use case was presented by Waldek Mastykarz on his blog: creating a selector for retrieving a random element. You can see a slightly modified version of his code below: (function($){ var random = 0; $.expr[‘:’].random = function(a, i, m, r) { if (i == 0) { random = Math.floor(Math.random() * r.length); } return i == random; }; })(jQuery); // This is how you use it: $(‘li:random’).addClass(‘glow’);

7) Use CSS Hooks The CSS hooks API was introduced to give developers the ability to get and set particular CSS values. Using it, you can hide browser specific implementations and expose a unified interface for accessing particular properties. $.cssHooks[‘borderRadius’] = { get: function(elem, computed, extra){ // Depending on the browser, read the value of // -moz-border-radius, -webkit-border-radius or border-radius }, set: function(elem, value){ // Set the appropriate CSS3 property } }; // Use it without worrying which property the browser actually understands: $(‘#rect’).css(‘borderRadius’,5); What is even better, is that people have already built a rich library of supported CSS hooks that you can use for free in your next project.

8) Use Custom Easing Functions You have probably heard of the jQuery easing plugin by now – it allows you to add effects to your animations. The only shortcoming is that this is another JavaScript file your visitors have to load. Luckily enough, you can simply copy the effect you need from the plugin file, and add it to the jQuery.easing object: $.easing.easeInOutQuad = function (x, t, b, c, d) { if ((t/=d/2) < 1) return c/2tt + b; return -c/2 * ((–t)*(t-2) – 1) + b; } // To use it: $(‘#elem’).animate({width:200},’slow’,’easeInOutQuad’);

9) The $.proxy() One of the drawbacks to using callback functions in jQuery has always been that when they are executed by a method of the library, the context is set to a different element. For example, if you have this markup: And you try to execute this code: $(‘#panel’).fadeIn(function(){ // this points to #panel $(‘#panel button’).click(function(){ // this points to the button $(this).fadeOut(); }); }); You will run into a problem – the button will disappear, not the panel. With $.proxy, you can write it like this: $(‘#panel’).fadeIn(function(){ // Using $.proxy to bind this: $(‘#panel button’).click($.proxy(function(){ // this points to #panel $(this).fadeOut(); },this)); }); Which will do what you expect. The $.proxy function takes two arguments – your original function, and a context. It returns a new function in which the value of this is always fixed to the context. You can read more about $.proxy in the docs.

10) Determine the Weight of Your Page A simple fact: the more content your page has, the more time it takes your browser to render it. You can get a quick count of the number of DOM elements on your page by running this in your console: console.log( $(‘*’).length ); The smaller the number, the faster the website is rendered. You can optimize it by removing redundant markup and unnecessary wrapping elements.

11) Turn your Code into a jQuery Plugin If you invest some time in writing a piece of jQuery code, consider turning it into a plugin. This promotes code reuse, limits dependencies and helps you organize your project’s code base. Most of the tutorials on Tutorialzine are organized as plugins, so that it is easy for people to simply drop them in their sites and use them. Creating a jQuery plugin couldn’t be easier: (function($){ $.fn.yourPluginName = function(){ // Your code goes here return this; }; })(jQuery); Read a detailed tutorial on turning jQuery code into a plugin.

12) Set Global AJAX Defaults When triggering AJAX requests in your application, you often need to display some kind of indication that a request is in progress. This can be done by displaying a loading animation, or using a dark overlay. Managing this indicator in every single $.get or $.post call can quickly become tedious. The best solution is to set global AJAX defaults using one of jQuery’s methods. // ajaxSetup is useful for setting general defaults: $.ajaxSetup({ url : ‘/ajax/’, dataType : ‘json’ }); $.ajaxStart(function(){ showIndicator(); disableButtons(); }); $.ajaxComplete(function(){ hideIndicator(); enableButtons(); }); /* // Additional methods you can use: $.ajaxStop(); $.ajaxError(); $.ajaxSuccess(); $.ajaxSend(); */ Read the docs about jQuery’s AJAX functionality.

13) Use delay() for Animations Chaining animation effects is a powerful tool in every jQuery developer’s toolbox. One of the more overlooked features is that you can introduce delays between animations. // This is wrong: $(‘#elem’).animate({width:200},function(){ setTimeout(function(){ $(‘#elem’).animate({marginTop:100}); },2000); }); // Do it like this: $(‘#elem’).animate({width:200}).delay(2000).animate({marginTop:100}); To appreciate how much time jQuery’s animation() save us, just imagine if you had to manage everything yourself: you would need to set timeouts, parse property values, keep track of the animation progress, cancel when appropriate and update numerous variables on every step. Read the docs about jQuery animations.

15) Local Storage and jQuery Local storage is a dead simple API for storing information on the client side. Simply add your data as a property of the global localStorage object: localStorage.someData = “This is going to be saved across page refreshes and browser restarts”; The bad news is that it is not supported in older browsers. This is where you can use one of the many jQuery plugins that provide different fallbacks if localStorage is not available, which makes client-side storage work almost everywhere. Here is an example using the $.jStorage jQuery plugin: // Check if “key” exists in the storage var value = $.jStorage.get(“key”); if(!value){ // if not – load the data from the server value = load_data_from_server(); // and save it $.jStorage.set(“key”,value); } // Use value To Wrap it Up The techniques presented here will give you a head start in effectively using the jQuery library