Business Need and Current Situation
Siltronica (like many other large corporations) has historically utilized the standard Waterfall methodology for software development. While there is a time and a place to utilize this approach (in well defined areas with simple requirements), Agile is a preferable methodology in most other situations.
The Agile (“Manifesto”) Software Methodology approach was developed in the early 90s to counter many of the shortcomings of Waterfall. According to the authors of the Agile Manifesto: “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.” (Manifesto for Agile Software Development , 2001)
Siltronica is moving their development processes to embrace an Agile approach in order to deliver faster, incremental value to business stakeholders. This approach also benefits the company because the business landscape is quickly evolving and Agile enables greater flexibility to changing business environments and business needs.
Offshoring IT development is not new: It has been occurring since the mid-90s. Siltronica began moving IT capabilities offshore in the early 2000s,
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
Now agile methodologies—which involve new values, principles, practices, and benefits and are a radical alternative to command-and-control-style management—are spreading across a broad range of industries and functions and even into the C-suite. National Public Radio employs agile methods to create new programming. John Deere uses them to develop new machines, and Saab to produce new fighter jets. Intronis, a leader in cloud backup services, uses them in marketing. C.H. Robinson, a global third-party logistics provider, applies them in human resources. Mission Bell Winery uses them for everything from wine production to warehousing to running its senior leadership group. And GE relies on them to speed a much-publicized transition from 20th-century
In the world of Computer Science, Information Technology, and Software development, people always work together to get tasks done. Whether you get someone from the Business side, the programming side, the Cyber Security side, or even HR, these people all work together sometimes to work on a task and finish the task. Agile is one of the most prominent method of using and as well as building a design for a client’s needs. But to make it a little more complicated, there a few different subsets within Agile – Scrum and Waterfall.
Agile Development Methods (Agile) and the Waterfall Method (Waterfall) are two different styles of designing and managing the Soft Development Life-Cycle (SDLC)
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”).
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
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.
The effectiveness of the agile approach within a company is relative to the ability in which processes and procedures can be adjusted to better fit its needs. A key factor for adopting successful agile is through the encouragement of a constantly changing environment where changes can happen frequently, become accepted as the norm, and be easily integrated into the process. Process formalities are frequently revised to meet the needs within SeisWare. As a case scenario there was a point in time dedicated for bug fixing during the release cycle which
Agile Software Development: The iterative development strategy focuses on incremental delivery of usable software ("What is Agile Software Development?", 2017)
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].
Software development is a field where developers thrive to provide products faster, better and very inexpensive methods. “Agile Development” term used for several iterative and incremental software development methodologies. Each agile method is unique in its approach, they all impart a typical vision and core attributes. As matter of fact all the methods are fundamentally incorporate with each other and having a review system provides successive ways to enhance, refine and deliver a software system. The below figure represents the steps followed in agile development
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
In conclusion, agile software development is a very exciting and useful approach, although some project suit agile more than others. The collaboration and visibility can provide a much better and rewarding experience for the team to develop software products. Over the last years, many companies dramatically improved their performances
To meet and exceed the expectations of the Business, Client organizations are progressively looking at using agile methodologies for software development. Agile methods attempt to minimize risk of software development by developing software in short time boxes, called iterations. An agile software development process release new working version of software at the end of every iteration. Scrum is one of the most popular agile development methodologies increasingly being adopted by IT firms.