Waterfall and Agile Methodologies

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who are adaptable and are able to think independently, the product is expected to change with the rapid changes in the technology, market and business needs.

Agile methodologies came up with the need to develop products which could accommodate the fast paced evolution of Internet. There are deliverables submitted at each stage and enhancements are delivered in weeks rather than in months.

For example, consider a company ABC developing product XYZ involving agile methodology. The final deliverable is expected after 11 months. But the product has to incorporate changes requested by marketing team. The project is divided into several iterations, each iteration timed 2-8 weeks. At the end of each iteration, a working product is delivered. The requirement which cannot be delivered in the first iteration would be delivered in subsequent iterations based on the priority. There are a total of 10 iterations where each iteration delivered incrementally enhanced and updated features.

When the teams are following waterfall methodology, then the parent company has to view the teams to be in different departments. The deliverable of each team is independent and hence the organization has to assess the progress of each team separately. The teams working under the waterfall methodology will have specific goals set for their respective team only. Hence, each team is not bothered about the outcome of other teams in the project. Two teams don’t work in parallel for the same project. Though the teams work to achieve organizational goals, the teams will be restricted to achieve their respective goals and hence there are not much interactions between the teams. The parent company has to assign different managers to track the progress of each team under one single project.

When the parent organization attempts to adopt agile technology, teams can perceive agile negatively, if there is improper redefinition of project members or work process. There can be a misfit between the existing methodology, if there is poor communication and conflicts between different team members. Some of the teams might struggle to follow agile practices but end up finding ways to work around them to fit the existing structure. This might lead the project to go over the estimated budget and time. When the parent company structure is agile, in the organization’s perspective all the teams belong to a same department. For example, the development team, architecture team, testing team, release team, operations team are all under one department. Hence, these teams should work together to achieve the common goal set by the organization. Further, the agile methodology will facilitate better communication and promotes good team work. Most of the team members will stay on top of any issues that arise. Since the team is small in agile, there can be only one manager to manage an entire project.

One of the most popular types of agile methodology is scrum. It is a simple and flexible agile methodology.

There are three roles involved in scrum. Product owner is an interface between the business, customers on one side and the team on the other side. He/she works closely with the teams to determine the requirements, plan the order of implementation and documentation as required. He/she has the most responsibility and authority. The product owner should have a very good understanding of the users, the market place and future trends of the product. The main job of the product owner is to motivate the team with clear goals. Also the product owner has to prioritize what has to be delivered at the end of each sprint. Communication is the ultimate responsibility of the product owner. He/she must be able to communicate proper messages to different people at any point of time.

A team is a self-organizing group of people who are involved in development and testing of the product. An ideal team size for scrum is 5-9. The scrum team may contain people with various skill sets. For example, one team might contain architects, developers, testers, analysts, etc. People in the team are always collocated and work in groups in order to achieve the goals set for each sprint. Team has the autonomy to determine to structure of the product. All the team members adhere to a common goal and team as a whole is accountable for a delivery. Usually a scrum team consists of a balanced set of skills.

A scrum master is the one who trains and mentors other roles and helps in assisting other stakeholders who are involved in the process. The main task of the scrum master is to make the team members work efficiently by encouraging the problem-solving and decision making capabilities. He or she is responsible for the team to follow a Test Driven Approach. The scrum master ensures that there is proper communication between the scrum team and scrum product owner. He or she is the one who facilitates scrum events like daily Scrum meetings, Sprint planning messages, Sprint review meetings and Sprint retrospective meetings. The scrum master guards the scrum team and helps to remove any impediments faced by the team.

Development is done in sprints where each sprint lasts for about 2-3 weeks in length. Team commits to achieve certain requirements in sprint. Instead of documents, the user stories are used to describe the functions developed in the scrum methodology.

Management is the coordination and organization of the activities of business in order to achieve defined objectives. Project managers play a significant role in taking decisions and manage the progress of a project. Project manager has to manage people-the team members, business users, financiers, etc. He or she makes sure that everyone is aligned to work towards the intended goal. The manager can devise innovative ways to manage imperfections like irregular status update meetings. Project manager also has a control over the change requests. The project manager should be controlling the incoming change like change in the requirements, resources, skills, technology, architecture, design, development, etc. Manager has to take care about the prioritization of each incoming requirements, conceal the communication gap and conflicts. Since communication is the root cause for all the conflicts as well as happiness, a project manager’s role is to diligently think ahead and communicate proper messages to everyone. For example, if the team does not like the demo given by the product owner, then the project manager has to intervene and conceal the miscommunication between them. The project manager has right to set the project deadline for each of the team, if the organization is following waterfall methodology. He or she has to control process management-to see which process is best for the various parts of the project. The manager has to look into teams

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