Agile Vs Waterfall Case Study

Many business use the agile organizational methodology. As they require the ability to remain flexible, enduring ever-changing requirements. The agile organization develops more mission-critical, high-profile systems. Sharing responsibility within small teams (of 15 or less) is also a main principle of an agile organization. Never is a hierarchy design operational in the agile organization, as the group possess the ability to over ride decisions made by management. The agile type of organization displayed itself over time as an entrepreneurial type of organization providing the high-speed changing rather than the standardization of a bureaucratic organization (Johnson, Jackson, & Burrows, 2011).

OVERVIEW: Hy-Vee Corporate headquarters is based in West Des Moines and is an employee-owned supermarket. As of 2015, Hy-Vee has 233 stores across eight Midwestern states and $6.9B in annual revenue.

Agile processes do not devote much time up front to formal system specifications, but rather relies on continuous communication with the customer throughout the development process. The process accounts for the fact that needs often change or cannot be fully developed early on and is flexible to this. (+)

Agile values Individuals and Interactions over Processes and Tools. Agile emphasizes the importance of individuals having interactions and engaging in collaborative thinking for software design and development.

The idea behind Agile is to put people before processes, to deliver working software versus mountains of documentation, to collaborate with clients rather than negotiate contracts, and lastly to be agile rather than rigidly following a plan (History: The Agile Manifesto).

The traditional development method requires the definition and documentation of a stable set of requirements at the beginning of the project. It was inherited by other projects mainly related to construction which focused on the completion of one phase of production before moving on to the next phase, for example, laying the foundations of a building first and then proceeding with the further stages (Bowes 2014). Similarly, in Waterfall, the requirement gathering and designing work is done upfront before any coding takes place. The basic notion behind the traditional development approaches is that the projects are comparatively less complex, linear and predictable with clearly defined system boundaries which makes it simple to plan and follow without having any room for changes (Spundak 2014). Moreover, traditional development method depicts the requirements document as he key piece of documentation. The gathering of all the requirements, getting a sign off from the customer and then starting with the development of the project gives the project a limit of

Agile development and project management has its roots in the Information Technology world. A large portion of the information that follows in the next two chapters refers to IT related development and projects. That being said, Agile is not limited to IT and in fact the model is expanding well beyond strictly IT.

Abstract: Scrum Methodology has been the chosen development framework for the past decade. Created in 2001, Scrum has taken over as the development framework of choice by business and companies [7]. Scrums counterpart, the Waterfall Methodology has taken a back seat to Scrum. The traditional developmental framework used by companies and businesses previously was The Waterfall Methodology. When Scrum got developed it created a better understanding of how to develop projects in iterations rather than a linear waterfall style. Scrum is a developmental framework that is done in iterations and can be implemented on many different projects. This paper will go more into depth about the Scrum Methodology, The Three Artifacts, The Three Roles, Scrum Ceremonies, and The Waterfall Methodology.

Abstract: Agile software development is a conceptual framework for software engineering that promotes development in iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project .Software developed during one unit of time is referred to as an iteration, which may last from one to four week Scrum is part of the Agile movement. It is a lightweight process framework for agile development. The Scrum method is most often used to manage complex software and product development, using iterative and incremental practices. And results have been shown about significantly increase in productivity and reduces time to benefits relative to classic “waterfall” processes. But scrum method also have some problems and to overcome the problems a new approach is proposed

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.

Agile is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework, with "just enough" ceremony, that produces high quality solutions, in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders [1].

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

Due to its characteristics, the Waterfall method has some really good advantages towards it. First of it, the client knows what to expect. After all the requirements gathering and analysis a well estimated project is presented, with a good idea of the size, cost, and timeline for the project. More than this, the client will have a definite idea of what their program will do in the end. Secondly, its meticulous record keeping allows the ability to improve the existing program in the future, and because of waterfall’s strong documentation it allows for minimal project impact when facing an employee turnover. These two main points, predictability and well-documented projects are the Waterfall flagship in an industry that pursue the best cost

There are many development methodologies for creating information systems. One of the more popular methods, developed in 1970 by Winston Royce, was the waterfall methodology. The waterfall methodology required that a team follow a prescribed sequence of five major steps when developing an information system. The project phases are linear and performed in a very methodical order starting with requirements analysis, then moving to design, followed by implementation, verification, and finally maintenance (see Exhibit A.). This methodology has been in place for many years but the highly structured methodology posed some major challenges. One major problem is when the business users dramatically change the requirements in later phases. This results in major rework and in some cases even project failures. With the advent of the Internet and Web-based technologies, the systems development community needed a more flexible methodology as projects were under greater pressure to deliver systems faster. Then in 2001, a small team of technologists created an iterative agile development methodology which forced systems development efforts to be broken up into smaller manageable timeframes called “sprints”. These iterative sprints contain a set of manageable system components allowing the teams greater flexibility when producing software (see Exhibit B). According to the Agile for Dummies text, “Agile is an attempt to make the process of software development lean and effective, and it’s

Agile software development refers to a group of software development methodologies e.g. Dynamics System Development Model, Crystal Methods and Extreme programming (XP methodology). Agile methods attempt to minimise the risk in software in short time boxes called iterations. Every iteration includes all the tasks necessary to release the mini increment of new functionality: planning, requirements analysis, design coding, testing and documentation. At the end of every iteration the priorities will be evaluated. Agile methods emphasise real time communication, preferably face to face instead of written documents. Agile methods also emphasise working software as the primary measure of progress. Agile methods produce very little documentation compared to other methods. Most Agile teams are located in a bullpen and include all the people necessary to finish the software. (1) (3)