Advantages And Disadvantages Of Waterfall Strategy And Agile Improvement

Written off as a dying approach to software engineering I found that the Waterfall approach process was in fact alive and largely in use according to a Queue opinion article (Neill, 2004). While surveying professionals for the article in Queue, the Waterfall approach was reported to be in use by a third of the professionals that responded to the survey (Neill, 2004). I could not help but wonder if the Waterfall approach was some sort of zombie process that was back from being presumed dead, or if the method was being used for convenience purposes. Before I would be able to answer these questions for myself I would have to look into why these presumptions were made in the first place.

This article by Phillip A. Laplante and Colin J. Neill of Penn State University explores the rumors of the demise of the waterfall model. The Waterfall process model progresses software products linearly from conception, through requirements, design, code, and test (Neill, 2004). The Waterfall method was developed in 1970 by Winston Royce when computer systems were monolithic, number-crunching entities with rudimentary front ends and users’ needs were filtered through the partisan minds of the computer illuminati building the systems (Neill, 2004). Most systems built in that time did not pay much attention to input from stakeholders, which is a good environment for the Waterfall method to work in – an environment where requirements seldom change after specification due to the fact that users are not involved in the development and therefore cannot provide feedback regarding incorrect assumptions or missing features (Neill, 2004).

Recently, most of the organizations with BI Programs are making a paradigm shift to Agile BI which involves both process oriented and technical approach to implement BI projects. Agile BI constitutes organization’s ability to prepare its BI program to meet the evolving requirements of the business and its operations.

Focus is kept on the recurrence of condensed work cycles and also at the functional product yielded by the outcome, but in waterfall technique only once chance is been given to the development team to keep the project aspects right. But under the agile technique each and every feature of development including the design, requirements, is thoroughly checked under its lifecycle (Mahfuj et al, 2012). There is always some time to steer in another direction if a team stops at regular interval say after every two weeks and re-evaluates the project done.

Finding out what will permit an organization to work optimally is the driving impetus behind almost any business or organizational theory. The Waterfall Method appears, at first glance, to be a lot like the Roman Civil Code: anticipate as many contingencies as possible, and then proceed to delineate how they will all be tackled. The problem, as the literature seems to note, is that there will always be things or exigencies that cannot be anticipated – which is why agile

and new demands from users (Uikey & Suman, 2012). The SDLC focuses on the prime

The waterfall model was legally introduced as an idea through a paper that had been published by a man called Winston Royce in the year 1970. However, due to the waterfall model being introduced by Winston Royce himself, it had been introduced as an example of a flawed software development method, which was vulnerable due to its shortcomings. The waterfall model philosophy had been inherited from the hardware manufacture and construction strategies that had been in practice in the year 1970s; therefore it had a structured approach to the software development itself. In comparison to the agile methodology, which developed in the year 1990s where the developers had decided to break away from the traditional structured, segmented and administrative approaches, which were being made to the developed software, and progressed towards more of the flexible development styles. The term Agile can be referred to as being lightweight methods, which had been declared in a research paper in the year 1974 by Edmonds. Furthermore, some of the most noticeable and common agile methods of the software development that subsequently had been evolved were known as Scum in the year 1995, 'Extreme Programming ' in 1996, 'Adaptive Software Development ', 'Dynamic Systems Development Method ' in 1995 and 'Feature Driven Development '. In the year 2001, a team of developers in the agile software development had declared the agile manifesto. The agile

Compared to the agile, another famous software development mode called waterfall is driven by technique documents and this mode require the team to write a lot of requirement documents containing all the requirements to a certain software. It is written to allow people to understand what software should do. So the developers will develop the functions of software according to the documents strictly. But the agile software development just focuses on the necessary document. It is avoid taking a lot of time to write the requirement documents. Its opinion is that the face to face communication between the human is the most important thing. So the agile think the human is

The Waterfall or Traditional model is a linear or Sequential approach to develop a Product. In this methodology, each phase of the product’s life cycle takes place in sequence of events like : Requirement gathering ,Design ,Developing ,System Testing ,User Acceptance Testing(UAT),Fixing the issues and delivering the finished product whereas Agile is an iterative and team based approach to develop a product. In agile methodology, Instead of developing the product with all the features at once we divide the project into the smaller segments called sprints and incorporate new features in each iterations or sprints. Instead of extensive planning and design up front, agile methodologies allow changing requirements over time by using the cross functional teams who work on successive iterations to develop a product. In this model, the goal of each iterative

incremental development process makes it the opposite to the rigid requirement needs of the Waterfall method. Agile methodologies are open to change as the project starts and progresses. The contrasting requirements need of the two methodologies, is one of the main contrast points in today’s project life cycle processes. There is a constant struggle between the two processes even in today’s business landscape. I have worked at Google as a program manager - mobile and after Google, I worked at a satellite manufacturing company called Space Systems Loral. The former is a software company and latter is a hardware company. At Google, they have embraced agile methodologies for software development, as the company is very progressive in nature. They are also very open to feedback from their users, and therefore agile allows them to take in product suggestions and address users’ needs with no predetermined rigid requirements from clients or users for initial requirements. Work is done in mini project or sprints format and when there is a need to shift directions, everything already worked on is scrapped if not necessary, and then a complete reset occurs. Since the project’s initial framework is not known at the time the project starts, the final product can deviate drastically from what was initially envisioned. At Space Systems Loral, being that it is a hardware satellite manufacturing company, they inherently have to adopt the waterfall methodology for their needs.

The waterfall model consists of five phases such as requirements, Design, implementation, verification and maintenance. The method is a sequential design process where progress is seen as flowing downwards in a steadily manner, each development phase has its own distinct goals. The model is similar to water flowing down a cliff it can only flow in one way and cannot go back up it is the same with waterfall development ,after a development phase is completed it proceeds to the next development phase you cannot go back.

Waterfall approach has become so prevalent and popular that major US governmental organization started utilizing it. The most famous uses of waterfall are in the US Department of Defense (DOD) and NATO. Although waterfall utilized by many businesses and organizations around the world. Below are the are benefits and drawback to this approach mentioned in many literatures.

Waterfall and agile methods of development are not the only two methodologies available, but they generally are among the common methods used to deliver projects. Each has its individual merits, but sometimes one method is more appropriate for a particular project than the other. The waterfall and the agile are both usable methodologies and each have its own strengths and weaknesses. Waterfall is attempting to predict the future and whereas Agile is all about responding quickly to the present.

The Waterfall Model is a sequential design process, often used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the

The disadvantage of waterfall development is that it does not allow for much revision. Once an application is in the testing stage, it is very difficult to go back and change something that was not well-documented.