Agile vs Waterfall – Which Project Management Methodology to Choose?
What is the best methodology to use for software development? The decision is not always an easy task. Does the project add value for the customer, the business or neither?
Keeping these factors into mind, we have decided to make a head-to-head comparison of two of the most widely used software development methodologies (Agile vs Waterfall) and assess where each one can be best employed at.
What is Agile?
Agile is a lean, modern approach to software development, created essentially as a solution-response to the drawbacks of previous methodologies. Given the name, Agile emphasizes on early-delivery of the product and supports adaptive and flexible changes that can be made at any point in the project’s lifecycle.
Agile methodologies contain a wide range of different forms: SCRUM, Extreme Programming (XP), Feature-Driven Development (FDD) and Crystal.
9 Global Project Management Survey 2017 , revealed that approximately 71% of organizations use Agile approaches.
Principal Mechanics of Agile
The agile workflow operates on the following principles:
Iterative approach – Development is fragmented into short time frames known as iterations, that last 2-4 weeks. Each iteration involves cross-functional team performance that focuses on delivering the finished product by the end of the given timebox.
Change-management – Each stage of development undergoes progress review and analysis to ensure customer satisfaction aligns with the scope of the project. Changes are encouraged to be made and adopted whenever required for optimization and improvement purposes.
Prioritization – Team works in complete harmony in all domains of a development phase: planning, designing, coding, testing, and evaluation. Each team unit communicates with the other unit to share their progress report and work collaboratively to mitigate existing loopholes or imminent roadblocks.
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Agile Development Life Cycle
The Agile Development Life Cycle is a breakdown all work into six steps:
Plan: Once the larger picture for the scope of the project is finalized, the outline is broken down into smaller, easily achievable objectives. Each of these objectives is then assigned to iterations that have goals and features exclusive to themselves.
Analysis: In the analysis phase, the team comes together to outline the main requirements of the project. Meetings between stakeholders and managers are conducted to realize the purpose and demographics of the usage of the product.
Design: The team begins work on software design and the system design using the requirements established in the analysis phase.
Coding: This is the implementation phase where the development begins with the very first iteration. Features and aspects of the development are created and then tested for flawless functionality.
Testing: Once the coding and development are completed, it is then tested for business requirements and possible bugs. This phase is characterized by all kinds of testing that can improve production efficiencies such as unit testing, systems testing, integration testing, and acceptance testing.
Deployment: This is the last phase of an iterative cycle in which the finished product is deployed to the customers. Customer feedback is obtained, and any likely changes or improvements needed to be made are then incorporated in the next iterative cycle.
Popular Agile Frameworks and Methodologies
Agile is a broad umbrella that encompasses multiple frameworks and methodologies to implement it as smoothly as possible. One of the most popular ones are:
1. Scrum
Undoubtedly one of the most popular Agile frameworks widely adopted by teams is Scrum. The framework is meant to handle projects through iterative and incremental means. Scrum is based upon continuous systematic collaboration among team members in between the project cycle.
There are three major roles in the scrum, Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the development team.
Let’s go through these elements to better understand their role:
The Scrum Master, also known as the ‘facilitator’ helps the team in understanding the scope of the project and acts as a central figure within a project. His prime duties include clearing out any ambiguities that team members might have regarding the project scope and remove any hurdles that are stopping the team from working efficiently.
A product owner is typically a key stakeholder of a project. He communicates the product vision with the development team and provides timely feedback on the work being done. Additionally, he is also responsible for prioritizing the tasks that would go in the backlog.
The development team is the team who’s working on all the development works of the product. Also known as the ‘Scrum team’, it’s a cross-functional group which is responsible for developing the actual product or service.
Aside from this, the work cycle is divided into ‘sprints’, which usually lasts from 2 to 4 weeks. During sprints, daily standups take place to report on project progress and the changes required.
2. Kanban
Another one of the most popular agile methodologies adopted by teams is Kanban. This agile methodology focuses on dividing the work into small parts and visualizing the workflow through cards in a way that makes identifying bottlenecks easy.
Typically, the Kanban system works through the principle of categorizing work into respective categories of ‘to do’, ‘in progress’, and ‘done’. You can easily move the cards to represent the progress. It also sets the work in progress (WIP) limits to restrict the number of items that can be added to a particular column to help keep the focus on current tasks only.
Kanban is a light and flexible system that works best for projects where requirements often change, as the floating cards allow to make quick changes in the workflow and give the team a heads up for what’s coming next.
19 Best Kanban Tools To Use In 2022
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3. Lean
The lean methodology of agile focuses on eliminating waste and building efficient workflows through continuous improvements in the project lifecycle. This methodology works entirely on the principle of adding only what creates value and removing the rest.
‘Waste’ here refers to any tasks, meetings, work processes, or documentation that may be slowing you down. Eliminate them, so you can achieve more in less time. Lean methodology recommends eliminating three enemies of lean – Muda (waste), Mura (unevenness), and Muri (overburden).
In a nutshell, lean changes the way teams operate and keep their concentration laser-focused to optimize the work processes as much as possible.
4. XP (Extreme Programming)
Extreme programming methodology of agile project management is directed towards improving the quality of software being developed and the responsiveness towards evolving customer requirements. The methodology works towards increasing the productivity of developers and setting ground rules when it comes to coding and testing.
Some of the rules when it comes to XP are including user stories, pair programming, test-driven development, and more. Extreme programming is also inclined towards releasing software in short development cycles, so it can adjust according to the customer requirements coming over time.
The general practices of extreme programming concentrate on continuous reviewing and testing throughout the project to fix any bugs and issues as actively as possible. And when followed correctly, these practices result in higher quality software.
5. Crystal
Crystal is one of the most flexible agile methodologies out there. The focal point of this methodology is individuals and their interactions, rather than processes. Crystal focuses primarily on 6 aspects when it comes to software development – people, interactions among them, community, communication, skills, and talent.
The methodology is actually a family of other methodologies such as Crystal Clear, Crystal Yellow, Crystal Orange, and others.
The genius behind Crystal, Alistair Cockburn, developed guidelines for team collaboration and teamwork, instead of step-by-step development strategies for a project. The methodology supports team accountability and transparency and provides an adaptive approach to let team respond to changing requirements effectively.
6. Feature-Driven Development (FDD)
As the name implies, features are at the heart of this agile methodology. The features in FDD doesn’t necessarily refer to product features, rather user stories in Scrum. Feature driven development consists of 5 basic activities – development of an overall model, the building of a feature list, planning by feature, designing by feature, and building by feature.
The feature list is usually generated by the uniqueness of each project model, and the main purpose of FDD is to deliver a client-centric software product.
FDD also encourages status reporting at all levels to keep an eye on project progress and results coming over time. This also eliminates confusion and excessive rework among the development team.
7. Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
DSDM is an agile framework that provides a comprehensive basis for planning and executing software development projects. Dating back to 1994, the Dynamic Systems Development Method was devised to create an industry-standard framework for delivering quality software.
The 8 basic principles on which DSDM operates are:
As a flexible agile framework, DSDM can be easily used for IT and non-IT projects alike.
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What is the Waterfall Model?
Dating back to as long as 1970, Waterfall , is a traditional method of software development that functions in a sequential format of development. It entails a step-by-step progression of the process, where each phase proceeds in a linear manner, making it easy to manage and understand.
According to a report published by Gartner in 2015 , 56% of project management methods comprised of waterfall methodology.
Principal Mechanics on which Waterfall Model Operates
The Waterfall Model operates on the following principles:
Distinct Goals: The long-term scope of the project is determined before development begins. The project managers, stakeholders, and clients all need to have a clear vision of what the end product will shape out to be.
Time-Boxing: Each phase is designated a fixed amount of time. Once the phase is completed, it is made to freeze so there is no return path to the previous step.
Independent mode of work: Each team for a specific domain, works on individual goals with little or no collaboration with teams working in other units.
Key Aspects of Waterfall Methodology
The Waterfall workflow can be visualized in the following steps:
Requirements: Much like Agile, this is the first phase that enlists all the technical and non-technical requirements of the project in a requirement-specific document. These requirements are strictly permanent that define the role and outlook of the end product.
Analysis: The team conducts an analysis of the systems and techniques used to conduct product development.
Design: Design specifications like services, programming languages, and data layers are determined and finalized.
Coding: In reference to the requirements, analysis, and objectives created in the previous stages, the development team writes the source code in the fourth stage.
Testing: In this stage, all types of testers, begin testing the finished version of the product for any number of errors and bugs.
Operations: The operations phase is responsible for deploying the complete and tested version of the product out into the market.
Agile vs Waterfall Pros & Cons
Since Agile is a contemporary software development methodology, it provides a myriad of benefits and advantages to IT teams who choose to work using it as their primary methodology.
In an HP online survey of 601 development and IT professionals , 54% of respondents stated that after adopting agile methodologies, they experienced enhanced collaboration between teams that did not exist otherwise. Whereas, 43% said the time taken to market was massively reduced.
However, not all project types and scenarios farewell with the liberal features of Agile.
Let’s take a look at both the Advantages and Disadvantages of Agile.
This is the most important advantage of Agile. As development is done in iterations, the team has flexible access to return back to the previous stage to make any sort and size of changes.
Because an agile project works in short cycles of iterations, it can be hard to assign a defined due date to the project timeline.
Work performed in smaller chunks allows team members to finish on time. Also, since coding and testing is conducted synchronously with the plan and design phase of the development, all changes and improvements are adeptly made with the moving workflow.
This increases the likelihood of an early product launch as well.
Corrections and improvements made at each cycle add an extra load of work on part of the development team. This is likely to result in additional time if dedication and competency are not exhibited by the members of the development team.
Customer feedback at the end of each iterative cycle allows equal customer-participation in the outcome and design of the product.
Since Agile Teams are built for closely-knit communication, all team members need to be in close proximity at all times during work to carry that level of communication effectively.
Agile encourages teams to work together by setting an alignment with their goals and objectives. Transparent and frequent communication between different team units permits a greater degree of productivity and erases chances of a conflict.
As Agile does not enforce the project to have a strict outline at the start, the end result of the product can shape out to be completely unexpected and grossly different from what the initial business requirement was.
Agile facilitates a constant room for improvement. At the end of each iteration, the finished product is tested for loopholes and made to improve after each testing cycle is completed.
The improvements are also a continuous part of the development as customer feedback is retrieved throughout the project lifecycle.
As progress is happening across cycles in agile, it becomes difficult to measure performance. You can’t set a lot of definite KPIs at the start of the project, so you don’t know what to look out for during the project lifecycle.
Agile supports evolving ideas and decisions to fit into the scope and development window of the project. This is especially beneficial for software apps and tools that do not have a defined end-goal and are subjected to changes based on customer experience.
Because there is no set goal at the end of the project, it becomes a challenge to accurately predict the resources required at the beginning of the project.
The inability to decide the cost, time and resources results in poor resource planning and may turn out to be a bigger problem once the project advances.
Although ever since Agile stepped into the limelight, Waterfall methodology has now largely become hackneyed but the linear approach to software development still has a set of benefits exclusive to itself.
Here are a set of both advantages and disadvantages of Waterfall methodology:
