Describing team structures
Development strategies
Waterfall
The process usually looks like this:
- Determining a problem,
- Analyzing the requirements,
- Building and testing the required code,
- The delivery outcome to users.
Follows a sequential order, but lacks the mmechanisms to overcome the problems of useless customer requirements.
Agile
- Constantly emphasizes adaptive planning,
- Early delivery with continual improvements,
- Rapid and flexible responses.
Agile manifesto states that:
- Development need to favor individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
- Working software over comprehensive documentation.
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
- Respond to changes over following a plan.
Agile software development methods are based on releases and iterations:
- One release may consist of several iterations,
- Each iteration is like a small, independent project,
- After being estimated and prioritization:
- Features, bug fixes, enhancements and refactoring width are assigned to a release.
- And then assigned again to specific iteration within the release, generally on priority basis.
- At the end of each iteration, there should be tested working code.
- In each iteration, the team must focus on the outcomes of the previous iteration and learn from them.
Comparison of methodologies
| Waterfall | Agile |
|---|---|
| Divided into distinct phases. | Seperates the project development lifecycle into sprints. |
| Can be rigid. | Known for flexibility. |
| All project development phases, such as design, development, and test are completed once. | It follows an iterative development approach so that each phase may appear more than once. |
| Define requirements at the start of the project with little change expected. | Requirements are expected to change and evolve. |
| Focus on completing the project. | Focus on meeting cusotmers' demands. |
Principles of Agile
- Satisfy customer through early and continuous delivery of software.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
- Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of months to a couple of weeks, with a preference for a shorter timescale.
- Businesspeople and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need and trust them to get the job done.
- The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
- Working software is the primary measure of progress.
- Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
- Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
- Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential.
- The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
- The team regularly reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Team structure
Vertical teams shown better results when using Agile.
Horizontal team
Vertical team
