Waterfall vs agile development.
Which one is better?
Waterfall development is where once you’re done with the work you sign off and can’t come back in and make adjustments.
Whereas agile development is similar to lots of mini waterfalls with a much smaller scope and it’s a lot more flexible.
Every two weeks (this is called a sprint) you have a small development cycle where you decide on the requirements, collaborate with developers and then develop it.
We use agile development because it reduces the chances for blow outs on projects and means we can show our client what we’ve been working on each step of the way.
We can also view the results much faster and work out what’s going to be the most used features based on market popularity.
This methodology suits most of our clients.
We keep them informed on what we’re going to be working on for the next sprint and then adjust based on their feedback.
This results in faster delivery of the software and reduces exposure to riskier features and unscoped work.
So, when you have uncapped development timeframes that can blow your time and budget constraints, always go with agile.
Waterfall generally works better for smaller development projects like building a basic website.
Video Transcript:
Hey guys, in this video, I’m gonna be comparing the waterfall development methodology and agile. So this is pretty important to know, because if you don’t actually know what methodology you are choosing for your dev team, then you’re going to run into problems further down the track because things just won’t be as organized and as structures as they would be if you are following a standardized methodology. So waterfall is great for very fixed projects where you want to sequentially work through from start to finish, where you go from requirements to design, to implementation and development, to testing and handover. Basically, if you are very clear on those sort of requirements, then waterfall is a good option. However, if you’re after more of an iterative process where you are still looking to learn about the users, you’re not quite sure of the fixed requirements yet. And you want to kind of learn a little bit more and get feedback on the fly.
Once you start to develop more projects, once you develop more features, then agile is gonna be a bit of a better option for you there because it allows flexibility as opposed to waterfall, which is much more sequential. And then going through building just really one project at the end of the whole develop cycle. Whereas agile works in the case where it’s lots of smaller project deliveries, where you can think of it as what they’re referred to as sprints. So each sprint is really a, can be a two week development period. It can also be one or three or four, depending on the different projects, generally twos kind of, of the standard period of time. And so within that sprint, you’ve gonna have your own backlog of tasks. And within that task list, that’s really just for that sprint. You’re gonna agree that those are the priorities to work on for that period of time.
And then once that sprint is over, you’re gonna move more and into having a quick bit of feedback as well, and understanding that whether there’s any sort of new priorities or new changes based on the work from the previous sprint. And what that allows you to do is to course correct. If there’s any sort of changes that are necessary, or you’ve realized that this features actually not that big a priority and to work on something else in agile is perfect for that. Whereas waterfall is just like, all right, we’ve agreed on this. We’re gonna deliver it all, whether it’s kind of necessary or not. And it lacks a little bit of flexibility in that regard. So let me know in the comments below, if you’ve got any experience working with either what your favorite is, if you’ve got any sort of comments we’d love to hear from you. So thanks again, him for watching. See on the next one.
