What are the differences between agile and waterfall?
The purpose of this technical note is to help people who are familiar with the DoD’s “Traditional World” of waterfall-based software development understand the terms, tasks, and phases that are used in the “Agile World” of Agile software development methods. The technical note should also assist those readers who are more familiar with Agile software development methods better understand the DoD environment.
The technical note does not champion either development approach, but rather provides a Rosetta Stone1 to help practitioners familiar with either development approach better understand the language used by the other. Nor does the technical note claim that the approaches are equivalent— only similar in that they use the same building blocks (but use them differently).
The first section of the technical note provides background material. It provides an overview of the waterfall software development method as well as a discussion of how this came to be the foundation of DoD’s “traditional” approach to developing software systems. This section goes on to provide an overview of Agile software development methods.
The second section of the technical note discusses some of the similarities between the Traditional World and the Agile World.
The third section of the report is devoted to a single discussion of a philosophical distinction between the Traditional World and the Agile World.
The fourth section of the technical note is a series of tables describing 25 select Traditional World and Agile terms. Each table defines the term or concept, describes where it might be used, and identifies associated terms or concepts.
The technical note concludes with a summary and an appendix which provide greater detail about the origins of the waterfall software development method and its history in DoD.
The authors hope that this technical note stimulates discussions among practitioners in both the Agile community and the waterfall community so that terms and definitions can be added, updated, or removed as needed.
Agile Methodology Tutorial for Beginners
This video on “Agile Methodology Tutorial for Beginners” explains the fundamentals of Agile methodology & its process. It also explains the history of Agile methodology and how it addresses the limitations of the Waterfall model.
Areas Covered:
- Evolution of Agile Methodology
- Understanding Waterfall Model and Its Limitations
- Agile Manifesto
- Agile Values & Principles
- Introduction to Agile
- Agile vs Waterfall
- Advantages of Agile
- Real-Life Implementation of Agile Methodology
- Disadvantages of Agile
- Components of Agile Methodology
- Agile Team Roles
- Agile Process/ Lifecycle
- Agile Metrics
- Different Agile Methodologies
- Scaling Agile
- Agile Best Practices
- 14th Annual State of Agile Report – Agile Trends
- Demo on Jira
- Agile Methodology Training & Certifications
