Christine McKay
CMGT410
October 23, 2017
Week 5 - Final The waterfall methodology is one of the most prominently recognized and most utilized methods in project management. Whether you’re using the waterfall methodology to manage a project or in some other fashion, let’s say for example, in software development, it works the same in producing a product – in a sequential manner and design, and in a series of stages that follow each other one after another. This means, once a person completes one step they move onto the next step and not before. As this process is sequential, once a step has been completed, the person cannot go back to a previous step – not without scratching the whole project and starting from the beginning. There’s no room for change or error, so a project outcome and an extensive plan must be set in the beginning and then followed carefully. The Agile project management approach, also referenced by the Agile
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The disadvantages of the waterfall methodology we’re, in essence, “resolved” by implementing an incremental approach, with the introduction of the Agile methodology approach. The Agile approach introduced a much more simplistic design that included modules broken down into prioritized “sprints”. These sprints were recognized as a benefit to many project management teams as they allowed project managers the ability to perform enhanced evaluations on a much more frequent basis. This also provides increased opportunities for the discovery of bugs and customer feedback as completed phases are rolled out. One of the biggest disadvantages to the utilizing the Agile methodology is not having a clear and concise project deadline, the projects end result and budgetary confinements can vary greatly and the end result can be grossly different than what the original scoping plan had planned intended it to
Cost and resource needs are higher for traditional than Agile due to Waterfall’s sequential development phase of all requirements determined in the beginning, software design and finally implementation of master design. The need for all information up front takes substantial time to gather and the sequential design does not allow for project changes as the flow enters into the programming stage. With Agile, costs remain low because there exists an incremental and iterative approach to the project, meaning less time is used to collect all requirements up front, the
The project will be managed using a modified waterfall technique. In this approach, the initial two phases of the
Furthermore, the way by which these methodologies work is quite simple, they essentially serve as blueprint for project managers. Blueprints that specify what tasks should be tackled and in which order. For instance, under the agile software development methodology a lot emphasis is
Using the waterfall approach the system developers will be able to focus on one piece of the system and move on each part separately. This will give the design team more time to focus on small sections of the new coding. Moving from one stage to the next means that each step has been checked thoroughly and is completed.
The rigid methods employed by the Waterfall approach makes it easy to manage because the team cannot move onto the next stage if all of the
From my perspective, though not being privy to a genuine cost analysis, yet being well versed in areas that do impact our financial well-being – most notably where challenges in back-end scenarios could be met more immediately and internally rather than hired out and realized on an external vendor’s own timeline – I will provide an analysis that clearly displays the benefits of agile methodology over our current use of waterfall. With this essay, I intend to provoke change, though I do understand that further consideration and discussion will be required prior to any realization of meaningful change.
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
Indeed, in an unstable environment, Traditional Project Management can lead to failure if changes are too impacting and important regard to the final product. Traditional Project Management involves a waterfall methodology to manage projects. It follows a weel structured stage plan. Those plans used to be quarterly, yearly or multiple yearly. For Marketers, it is often long and heavy as a whole project is managed in one time, from the planning to the deliverable, without real flexibility and real feedback. Marketing Managers use Waterfall because of the business priorities.
At no point in the process development can the next phase begin until the previous phase is completed. This is how the waterfall method received its name, it begins at the top and works its way down towards the bottom, and at no point can the process be reversed. Youssef Bassil in his article titled “A Simulation Model for the Waterfall Software Development Life Cycle”, defines the water fall method as the following, “The Waterfall model defines several consecutive phases that must be completed one after the other and moving to the next phase only when its preceding phase is completely done. For this reason, the Waterfall model is recursive in that each phase can be endlessly repeated until it is perfected.” There are certain situations where the waterfall method is advantageous in application and that involves the following; a short time frame, there3 are no unclear expectations, the technology is understood, the requirements are fixed and the product propose is stable.
The important thing here to mention is that each method consists of activities specific only to them. These activities are yet another difference between the waterfall and agile method. The waterfall model emphasizes planning while the agile method stresses flexibility more. Waterfall model groups its activities in phases, where each phase is different and has its purpose. These phases include planning phase, analysis phase, design phase, implementation phase, and support phase. [1] Because the development process goes from phase to phase, it is crucial to carefully plan each one out. Once you move to the next phase, there is no going back. This model is very simple and easy to understand and use. However, when the system is put to a test, if it does not satisfy all the requirements, then the entire system must be redesigned, which is a very inefficient and costly job to do. This is the biggest weakness of the waterfall approach and that is why this model is best suited for systems with well-defined requirements as well as those with a lower chance to change in the near future. In contrast to the waterfall method, the agile method uses the iterative approach to systems development. This way, all the phases that are previously mentioned in the waterfall model are also present, but they are repeated in each iteration. For this reason, detailed planning is unnecessary because, at the end of each iteration, the prototype is tested and improvements are made. Also, it is much easier for clients to be closely involved with the whole process of development. Being able to actually see the system’s prototype not only helps clients in forming their image of what they can expect in the end, but also helps developers understand the clients’ vision of the system. Although the collaboration between developers and clients is positive and most certainly welcome, implementing all ideas that are
Agile methodologies are easy to implement in newly formed organizations where processes and procedures are changed every month. But in public sector organizations implementation of agile would be difficult.
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.
The waterfall method works well for certain scenarios but can be at a disadvantage in other aspects of the project cycle. Chatterjee explained that the waterfall method (Chatterjee,
In short, Waterfall can work well when everything is following the plan because the model rely on all specification and documentation which finished before implement it,