Waterfall to Agile - Transition Challenges

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