Waterfall to Agile - Transition Challenges

The study identifies the key challenges faced by organizations while transitioning from Waterfall to Agile methodology. It discusses challenges related to transitions in methodology, management and organization, people, process, and tools and technology. The paper also provides solutions to overcome these challenges. Desklib provides study material for Agile Methodologies.

Waterfall to Agile - Transition Challenges
Name of the Student
Name of the University
ABSTRACT – Agile methodology emerges with
greater flexibility with the new model for the
development of the organization. The study has a
systematic methodology that was identified with
the key challenges in the process of transition
from waterfall to agile. The organization of ABC
Company has adopted an agile methodology to
challenge their work practice at the technical and
organizational levels. It was analysed that agile
methodology has a mindset of transition for the
team, which has become the biggest challenge in
the pattern of the waterfall model to agile. Thus,
the paper shares an experience about the
challenges in transitioning from waterfall to agile.
Keywords: Waterfall Methodologies, Agile Methodologies,
Challenges, Transmission.
INTRODUCTION
It is important to utilise and understand the difference
between the methodologies of Waterfall and Agile. Along with
it, the way the company transits from one methodology to the
other needs to be realized. However, the waterfall model is
traditional and generally used for the transition of an agile
model with larger corporations. Due to certain privacy
challenges, the company has to go through the transition of the
waterfall to an agile method. There are benefits and advantages
for the ABC Company with the development of the agile
methods since the business process is changing from a
traditional method. Agile method is reported to have a
completely different value from the traditional method. Thus,
the company will face many challenges concerning this
transformation, that is to be discussed in the section below.
1.1 Challenges of Transitions in Methodology
The article consists of challenges that the companies
mostly face while transitioning from Waterfall to Agile. ABC
Company works on multiple projects simultaneously. However,
when it comes to the transition of the methodology from
Waterfall to Agile, then it becomes difficult to manage multiple
projects at a time (Maassen, 2018). The next challenge that was
reported had been the assigning of the tasks along with time
and implementing appropriate team members. The team was
able to change the sprint time from two weeks to one week for
which the team member had to think about another way to
measure the amount of work in hours and was able to see the
time that everyone spends for the project (Lampropoulos &
Siakas, 2018). While the transition is made, the amount and
lanes of communication is a problem for the team members. A
project has completed with Waterfall Methodology and it
requires a written communication, but there is no requirement
for a verbal collaboration and communication, which is a big
change in the transition of the business methodology into an
agile one. Another issue is that people were not aware of the
way agile methodology looks like (Mitsuyuki et al., 2017). This
problem makes people difficult to understand the work and
reach the goal the team make. People are not willing to change
or learn any new methods that can help them in completing the
project even though they have been facing the biggest obstacles
while transitioning from Waterfall to Agile methodology. For
every transition between the methodologies, there is an
involvement of technical and human factor with which an issue
arises that can gain a richer understanding about the
organization while making a transition from Waterfall to Agile
(Ouriqueset al., 2018).
1.2 Challenges in Waterfall to Agile Migration
Some of the challenges the agile team faces are
discussed below.
1.2.1 Agile process or method: It becomes difficult to
understand the agile methods and their underlying
principles. When people have started to adopt Scrum
methods, they did not understand the principles that
have troubled them physically and the result has ended
up with neither the adoption of Waterfall nor Agile
(Wagner et al., 2017).
1.2.2 The biggest challenge at present that the agile team is
facing is different mindsets of the people that do not
change from the waterfall assigned in a specific time,
budget and scope. Such specification is called the triple
constraint that trickles along with every task, which
needs to be equal to 40 hours. Agile could time box
projects and iterations or sprints. It involves a 2-week
time box and the end of the sprint has a full-functioning
deliverable that does not specify the time. The time for a
specific task is proposed for budgeting. Each team
member gets a fix burn rate per iteration.
1.2.3 Another challenge in changing the concept of the
waterfall to agile is mainly in shifting, as both the
method is different (Mohan, 2018). Changes are
difficult to accept in many cases. The biggest hurdles
are the concepts of introducing the iterative
development with the ongoing requirements.
1.2.4 The agile team needs to easily communicate with the
members of the team regarding the whole project or it
can be thrown out of track. With the existence of an
Agile method, the primary agile team is being
distributed to various locations. If the distributed team
has to manage then the first thing to be established
would be the communication methods that can be done
through live chats, video conferencing and collaboration
tools (Dingsøyr et al., 2018).
1.3 Challenges related to Management and Organization
The challenges that the company faces is regarding the
cultural and organisational influence of the structure of the

social organisations. The significant influence exerts in the
organisational culture for social negotiations, decision-making
processes, problem-solving strategies, and a mechanism for
planning and controlling (Almeida, 2017). The organisational
cultural change alters the people’s mindset as the process is not
easy. The style of management needs to change from
traditional to agile methods also from command and control to
leadership and collaboration. The next subject of a challenge in
this is the documentation. For the traditional methods,
heavyweight documentation is completely based upon whereas
in the agile methods, there is limited documentation and mostly
has a tacit knowledge.
1.4 Challenges related to People
The adoption of the agile method with respect to the human
behaviour tends to achieve value and trust with the
collaboration and communication between the members of the
cooperative process. Even managers select some appropriate
personnel, with the necessary training, creating and mentoring
work practices to promote process excellence. Another
challenge is the customers for which they have dedicated team
members with different goals, experience and attitude
(Raspopovicet al., 2016). However, for such a situation, the
traditional project managers had no options for the new
situation. A critical role is played by the customers for the
success of the agile methods which could be responsive,
authorised, committed, collaborative and knowledgeable
(Abrahamssonet al., 2017). The presence of such customer is
not as easy as it could be a barrier in the agile project success
mostly at the time of first joining. Enough amount of attention
is being paid by managers for experience and professional
coach. Lack of mentoring, coaching and training is the critical
issue.
1.5 Challenges related to Process
Without the investment of time and effort, there is no
availability of agile activities from a changing attitude. It is
problematic to have a high level of CMMI. The traditional
methods have processes that are based on standard
measurement and activities for processing the agile methods
with uncertain activities. This is associated with rapid
development along with high quality production (Hekkalaet al.,
2017). The debatable issue in agile methods is the practice of
finding the appropriate measurements. Sometimes it becomes
confusing to find the adequacy and documented tools for
measuring the agile methods. The changes in the process model
have a significant influence on tools, strategies, techniques and
role of the people. It becomes difficult for a software developer
to do frequent test for developing a test code in order to achieve
continuous integration. The changes in the process model from
waterfall to agile are an approach that could alter this obstacle.
The next issue is to choose an appropriate agile method. This is
all based on the values of agile methodology along with
different activities and practices. Their difference is in
priorities, project, implementation and team size, code
ownership, and iteration time (Raunak& Binkley, 2017). It is
difficult to approach an agile method with a wrong selection
that causes more effort and cost, which may even lead to failure
of the agile movement.
1.6 Challenges related to Tools and Technology
Transforming to the agile method is a big technological
issue. However, companies have to be aware of it. With the use
of hardware and non-flexible tool, there is a barrier in agile
movement (Dönmez & Grote, 2018). Companies use tools for
continuous integration, version management, incremental
evolution, re-working, and version management. The
challenges could be confronted with enough training and
investment. The agile method is the best way that could
provide appropriate tools for the development environment
along with its distribution.
1.7 Some Solution to the above challenges
There are six different challenges faced in the above
section to which five different solution being provided that
are suitable for the organization.
 The first is that the project team member along with
the project manager should have a positive attitude
with the type of work that need to create a plan for
solving the problems, and effectively manage various
tasks and deadlines. It is very much necessary to
manage one particular task with full attention.
 The second is the use of the planning software and
before that provide proper training for the proposed
methodology. So that they do not face any issue in
using the new methodology.
 The third is to build the trust the members need to
communicate and collaborate with the project manager
and provide everyday update about the work that they
are doing. The project members need to be inform
about the project that could determine the
communication flows. So that they do not miss the
task deadline. The event need to be plan properly,
manage the schedule and through project calendar
keep track of the important dates. The better way of
collaboration with the team is to use the collaboration
software like the ProofHub, this will ensure that
project members are in loop will the recent project.
 The fourth is related to the process where it is very
much needed to avoid scope-creep. With proper
planning the goals needs to be systematically process
and try understanding the need of the customer.
Documenting every details about what is happening
and communicating about the challenges to the team,
management and the stakeholder.
 The fifth is the need of having core set of skills for the
workload and based on it analyse the team members’
strengths and weaknesses. It would be better to
enhance the knowledge by providing proper training to
end the gaps in the skill.
Conclusion:
From the paper, it has been concluded that the
transition process is a complex process as it involves the
operations of the organizations, their processes and principle.
The study has found numerous benefits when the organization
has introduced the agile method that has been derived from
practices. The study reiterates that using the Agile method can
help reduce the efforts of engineers and managers on a large
scale. Challenges such as personal education, stakeholder
involvement, experience, commitment, teams, and stakeholder
location, course availability of training and needs of the
customers has been identified in the study. Moreover, it is
understood that the organization and the management have
mostly undertaken these challenges. Thus, it can be reaffirmed
and understood from the study that organizations will benefit
largely when converting from the waterfall method to the Agile
method.
References

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