Compare and Contrast of Agile Methods of Development to Rapid Application Development
Software development methods are continuously important in the field of information systems. With the proliferation of advances in new technology and increasingly competitive business environment, the importance of information systems has risen. Competitive advantage can be contingent on how fast information is collected, processed, normalized, and analyzed to make important decisions. Information systems require the use of special software tools that can produce and provide information in real time in an accurate and efficient manner. Software development is a topic of growing importance due to the dynamic and increasingly complex business environment and tempo. For a business, staying ahead of its competitors might depend on how quickly software is developed and or how development of the software can be adapted to meet changing customer requirements and still meet schedule and technical goals that support new business.
Agile Methods of Development and Rapid Applicable Development methods both offer fast delivery and flexibility when it comes to software development. Agile methods of development and rapid application development have many similarities and the terms are sometimes used interchangeably or as a subcategory of one another by those not deeply involved in developing software or managing a project. By perusing the articles on agile development and rapid application
The computer software industry is a relatively new development on the international market place. Only a few decades ago, there was no such industry at all. Thanks to a number of innovative software developers, the rise of the industry has become a booming success. The industry itself increased dramatically in the 1990s. It was during this period that software was growing in a number of other supporting industries. Software soon became an integral part of industries like healthcare, business applications like databases and network structures, personal finance, and education (Kent & Williams 1997). The more intertwined it became with other business applications, the more successful software became as a
“Agile” was first introduced in 2001, by a team of software engineers looking to improve their adaptiveness and responsiveness to ever-changing requirements. Not knowing where to begin, the team began by formulating principles, which they would use to guide their new development process. Which, in turn, lead to the creation of the Agile Manifesto, and thus a new methodology was born.
The Agile Methodology Principles makes the development much faster because the primary importance is given to the customer satisfaction and continuously delivers product. Even though requirements change at the ending phase the product is developed. The Agile development insist the self-organizing team which can create requirements, best architectures, best models. The Agile development promotes a distinct way of thinking to build things and methods to deliver continuous improvement of product. It facilitates to make best practices and decisions together. It a development to promote the adaptive planning, continuous improvement, evolutionary development and delivery, and required time to complete work. It encourages for rapid response to change in the whole development cycle. The project team prefers agile development to move in a creative and quick way. The project progress also depends on working software and project environment and support is provided and built by the individuals. They promote the sustainable environment. Constant attention is provided to the technical excellence and best models are given by the agile methodology. This principle helps the project team members
On the other hand, Agile methodology is a development method that promotes teamwork and flexibility throughout the life-cycle; it is a development method that supports using a small, cross functional team to provide software frequently in small increments on a regular cycle. It implements regular contact with employees and is more flexible compared to the Waterfall Method. There are several different Agile software development methodologies like Crystal Methods, XP, Dynamic System Development Model (DSDM), and Scrum, all examples are focused on flexibility and focuses on keeping code simple, testing
In Early 2000s, various software systems development methodologies were introduced and were started getting popular. One of them was agile method. Agile is a group of the latest and popular software systems development life cycle methodologies work in iterative way. All the requirements/needs and solutions are solved through collaboration between a development team and a business stakeholder. Agile method usually enhances an organized project management method which promotes regular assessment and revision. And the scrum is a sub group of agile. It is an iterative and incremental agile software development methodology for managing complex software and product development (“The Scrum Guide”).
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).
There is a cross section of projects ranging from a few weeks to a few years. There are also a wide cross section of customers, those capable of articulating clearly their requirements and the ones that are not clear on their requirements and the overall outcome to be achieved. The level of programmers within the Information Technology Department, where development work is executed, range from intermediate to advance or above average programming competence. The Waterfall approach is easier to manage and can be utilized for projects where there are clear requirements and the project is determined to be a long term one. Also, this method may be best suited given the organization’s requirements for thorough documentation and project accountability, when it comes to budget and cost. The Agile methodology can be used for projects where the requirements as well as the expectation from the end product are not as clear. The developers that are above average in terms of their competence can also use this method. In addition, the Agile method is also best suited for the projects that would require rapid
The dictionary meaning of “agile” is “ability to move quickly and easily” and this is the key aspect of Agile approach. It is a team based, iterative approach to development that emphasizes on rapid delivery and completing all functional components while the client is kept involved as part of the development process (Lotz 2013).
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.
The two reports attempt to explore the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing agile software development over the waterfall model. As described in the reports, more and more organizations are considering the agile process approach versus the more traditional waterfall approach. The agile processes evolved in the late nineties and began to emerge as a primary software development method. While organizations are moving towards agile processes, it is unclear which process is the most used. Article A details a survey in which 153 developers were asked to describe their software development processes. The waterfall method was the most used software development method. However, Article B details that 36 out of 66 projects analyzed revolved around the agile methodology. Nonetheless, both articles conclude that one method or approach is not a best fit for all projects.
The purpose of this report is to define and discuss the use of agile methodologies. Agile is becoming a more popular term within the information technology industry and this report will help those unfamiliar with its techniques understand how agile works. The goal is also to inform the readers why agile can be preferred over traditional methods. While reading this report, it is recommended to keep in mind that agile is an alternative to using the traditional systems development lifecycle method.
Choosing a proper method for software design is completely depended upon the requirements and end products of the company. These requirements and goals might change in the process of development of software depending upon the decisions of stakeholders, developers and system analysts.
It is very important to delivery software faster to the market and in most sophisticated manner. Agile has provided a promise faster to market and allows customer collaboration and agility to take change in requirements which facilitates development and delivery of product which is more up to date with stakeholder requirements.
One is the traditional development approach that begins with capturing the organisations desires and then progresses in order through design, development, testing and finally implementation. Alternatively, numerous IT professionals make use of Rapid Application Development methodology which basically is a faster and realistic approach. This methodology offers potential for numerous advantages including decreasing the risk of misunderstandings of business desires and increasing the possibility of the project been accomplished much
Software development is one of the highest demands in all over the world. We use software development techniques to solve the problems and to satisfy customers. Agile software development is a conceptual framework for software; it is also a group of software development methods based on iterative development. In 2001, agile software development was created by seventeen people with a desire to find alternative approaches to software development. The most important thing about agile methods are team work, conveying information to the team, face to face conversation, and satisfy the customer. There are various methodologies but I am going to describe the most popular ones.