Agile web development is a model for development of web applications. It is more efficient and powerful for a short timeline than other models. It incorporates face-to-face communication, and considers technical personnel as well as customers as part of the team. Agile web development uses project managers and business analysts, and emphasizes clear goals, planning and iterative delivery. Agile web development ensures the successful completion of a product at the end of each iteration. The Agile web development model follows planning, requirement analysis, designing, coding, testing and documentation during development. Successful interaction increases success of the application because of the focus on customer involvement. This decreases problems that come with the development team changing the product in a late stage due to changes in requirements. Instead, both the development team and the customers are informed, therefore customer confidence remains high and there are minimal delays.  All tasks are performed at a previously specified period, with just enough documentation to be effective.

Rails is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology, and is often utilized by web developers for its suitability for short, client-driven projects.

Ruby on Rails is a framework that makes it easier to develop, deploy and maintain web applications. Soon after its initial release, Rails went from being an unfamiliar tool to being a wide-reaching phenomenon. It has become the framework of choice for the implementation of a wide range of Web 2.0 applications as it is both simple and subtle.

While talking about the Agile capabilities of Rails in their book Agile Web Development with Rails, authors Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson noted that:

“Agility is part of the fabric of Rails. Let’s look at the values expressed in the Agile Manifesto as a set of four preferences.  Agile development favors the following.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Rails is all about individuals and interactions. There are no heavy toolsets, no complex configurations, and no elaborate processes. There are just small groups of developers, their favorite editors, and chunks of Ruby code. This leads to transparency; what the developers do is reflected immediately in what the customer sees. It’s an intrinsically interactive process. Rails doesn’t denounce documentation. Rails makes it trivially easy to create HTML documentation for your entire codebase. But the Rails development process isn’t driven by documents. You won’t find 500-page specifications at the heart of a Rails project. Instead, you’ll find a group of users and developers jointly exploring their need and the possible ways of answering that need. You’ll find solutions that change as both the developers and users become more experienced with the problems they’re trying to solve. You’ll find a framework that delivers working software early in the development cycle. This software may be rough around the edges, but it lets the users start to get a glimpse of what you’ll be delivering.

In this way, Rails encourages customer collaboration. When customers see just how quickly a Rails project can respond to change, they start to trust that the team can deliver what’s required, not just what has been requested. Confrontations are replaced by “What if?” sessions. That’s all tied to the idea of being able to respond to change. The strong, almost obsessive, way that Rails honors the DRY principle means that changes to Rails applications impact a lot less code than the same changes would in other frameworks. And since Rails applications are written in Ruby, where concepts can be expressed accurately and concisely, changes tend to be localized and easy to write. The deep emphasis on both unit and functional testing, along with support for test fixtures and stubs during testing, gives developers the safety net they need when making those changes. With a good set of tests in place, changes are less nerve-wracking.

Rather than constantly trying to tie Rails processes to the agile principles, we’ve decided to let the framework speak for itself. As you read through the tutorial chapters, try to imagine yourself developing web applications this way: working alongside your customers and jointly determining priorities and solutions to problems. Then, as you read the deeper reference material in the back, see how the underlying structure of Rails can enable you to meet your customers’ needs faster and with less ceremony.”

Going forward, the features of Rails which make it ideal for the Agile Development Cycle are:

• More speed in project completion, along with considerable decrease in the length and volume of code written.
• Work progresses at a smoother pace, so the developer has less pressure when it comes to debugging.
• More competent and simple database access with the use of the most capable database access libraries in Rails, called the Active records.
• Self-regulating threading facility, irrespective of the operating system and the highly portable nature that facilitates the user-friendly nature of Ruby.
• Brilliant potential in loading the extension libraries dynamically with less maintenance.
• It's built in web server WEBrick which enhances Ruby's performance in web applications.

Conclusion:
Due to its simple nature and easy to use features as well as the speed of project completion, Rails is an ideal platform for Agile development practices. Keeping in view its accordance with the Agile Manifesto, it is not hard to predict that Rails will be the future of Agile development.

References:
Scotts Valley (2007) CodeGear™ Unveils First IDE for Agile Ruby on Rails Web 2.0 Development. Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2009 from http://www.codegear.com/article/3643

Agile Web Development with Rails, 2nd Edition. By Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson.

Wikipedia, Ruby on Rails.  Retrieved Jan. 16th, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails