Waterfall vs. Agile Methodology
Most software development projects apply either the Waterfall or Agile methodology. A development methodology is the procidure used by an engineering team in order to create a desired product. The Waterfall methodology represents the traditional approach, where the development process is conducted in a linear series of events. On its way toward the conclusion the progress flows continously through the phases of a project (analysis, design, development, testing) like a waterfall. The entire project is planned in advance. Agile is a more recently developed software development methodology, where the linear approach is replaced by an incremental, iterative one. Instead of planning the whole project in advance, Agile enables the adaption of requirements during the whole project. This artice provides an introduction of each methodology, a comparison and examples of use, in order to facilitate the decision whether Agile or Waterfall is more suitable for the next project.
Waterfall Methodology
The lifcycle model which is today known as traditional or Waterfall model was first described by Royce in 1970.[1] It is called Waterfall model because of its sequential and down-flow characteristic where the phases analysis, design, implementation and testing are processed consecutively downwards.[2] Each phase of the Waterfall model is processed in order without any overlapping and within a specified time period. Once a phase is completed there is no going back to a privious phase as it will be frozen.[3]
Analysis
In this phase all the requirements and customer needs of the desired system or product are gatherd and recorded in detail in a specification document.[2] This document will be used as input in the design and implementation phase. The requirements of the product should be clear before moving to the next phase as changes in requirement can not be adapted later in the process.[3]
Design
The outcome of the design phase are a specified hardware and a virtual overview of the desired system or software.[3]
Implementation
The actual development of the system starts in the implementation phase. The system is therefor divided in small sub units which are tested by the developers before forwarding them to the testing phase. A quality gate checklist helps to control if there is a deviation from the requirements, planned time-line and product scope.[4]
Testing
In this phase the sub units are integrated to one working system which is tested regarding quality and functional aspects.[4]
Cite error:
<ref> tags exist, but no <references/> tag was found
