Criteria for Selecting a Development Method – Agile, Waterfall, Agifall
Criteria for Selecting a Development Method – Agile, Waterfall, Agifall
By Zenkara
Why did you choose the method you’re using right now?
We’ve all been in the scenario where the old way of developing has become stale. Productivity is down, defect rates are rising, and team morale is low. Things may have been chaotic recently and work practice quality has slipped and shortcuts taken.
Before throwing out the old method and simply choosing the latest Agile method, you need to take the time to define your selection criteria carefully. Just choosing whichever method is currently making the social media rounds is not always your best approach. Deployments of new development methods often fail because they are just not suitable for the team/project/technology/customer.
Before investigating and choosing a method, define your critical criteria. What should the criteria look like?
- Size of the team (and the company)
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Geographical co-location or spread out across offices and countries
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Average experience of the developers
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Average tenure of the developers working together in a team
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Stability and visibility of requirements
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Level of customer involvement/engagement
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Need to predicting/estimating cost, effort
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Importance of milestones and gate reviews to the customer and contract
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Time to market needed for a minimum viable product
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Effectiveness of communication
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Level of developer interest in the new method
Each of these can have a significant impact on the success of your method deployment. Getting them right (or at least good enough) must the first priority for your development change effort. It can mean the difference between success and bankruptcy.
Zenkara focuses on streamlining and deploying business processes and quality systems and accelerating decision making through OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) and metrics systems. Zenkara is located in Brisbane, Australia.