Software Development Methodologies: A Comparative Study Agile Methodology and the Traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

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Software Development Methodologies

Introduction

In the past decade, project management has been undergoing a major transformation as it is applied to information system design. When you consider that traditional project management methodology originated from the body of knowledge of an entirely different domain (engineering, mainly of the industrial and civil kind), it is not surprising that project management in the information systems arena has evolved.

Many of the methods for developing systems originated in computer science which itself emerged from constructs used in engineering and mathematics. In the early days of computing this sufficed, however today, developing systems is much more than just engineering the most technically correct or “best” system. In some cases, what we as users may want is not the “best” system. Frequently, what we really want is the most practical system that is focused on and addresses our particular needs.

When we consider traditional project management and software development approaches, several disadvantages are immediately evident. For one, the huge effort required during the planning phase of a traditional project is often so all-encompassing that half (or more) of the resources for the project are expended before any development work even beings. Furthermore, requirements definitions are often so labor intensive and protracted that the requirements for the project have changed before development even begins.

Scope of the Study

Agile project management is an outgrowth of the agile software development movement. While the origins of agile project management can be traced back to ideas from a paper by Takeuchi and Nonaka in the January 1986 issue of the Harvard Business Review, it was not until Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber discussed the first agile method for software development at the 1995 OOPSLA conference that the idea of gained traction. While analyzing common software development processes, they found that traditional development approaches were not suitable for empirical, unpredictable and non-repeatable processes.

Today, there are several different approaches to implementing agile methods but underlying all of the various agile movements are some basic concepts that turn traditional methodologies on their head. The “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” stated four core principles:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Working software over comprehensive documentation.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.

Responding to change over following a plan.

Agile project management is deeply rooted in these principles but slightly modified to make sense in the project management, rather than software development, environment. This can be seen in some of the qualities of the agile project management approach. For example, agile project management emphasizes two important concepts. The first is that risk is minimized by focusing on short iterations of clearly defined deliverables. The second is that direct communication with partners in the development process is emphasized in lieu of creating copious project documentation. The reasons these two concepts are emphasized is simple: both help a project team adapt quickly to the unpredictable and rapidly changing requirements most development projects are carried out in.

Literature Review

Project Management ...