Software Development Methodologies: Agile and Waterfall Comparison

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of software project management history, focusing on the evolution and comparison of Waterfall and Agile methodologies. It begins with an introduction to software project management, emphasizing its importance in the rapidly growing software development industry. The report then delves into a detailed discussion of the Waterfall methodology, covering its history, including structured and object-oriented approaches, and its issues, successes, and project phases. Following this, the report examines the Agile methodology, exploring its history, the issues surrounding its adoption and implementation, and the role of RAD and JAD in its early development. The discussion also includes an observation of current industry trends and the selection of appropriate methodologies. The report provides a comparative analysis, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each methodology and their relevance in contemporary software development practices. The report concludes with a summary of the key findings and insights into the future of software project management.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT
Project Management history and relevance to Software Development
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s note

1PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Table of Contents
1. Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
2. Discussion....................................................................................................................................3
2.1 Waterfall History and Review...............................................................................................3
2.2 Waterfall Issues and Success.................................................................................................4
2.3 Agile History and Review.....................................................................................................5
2.4 Agile Issues and Success.......................................................................................................7
2.5 Observation of Current Industry Trends and Methodology Selection...................................8
3. Conclusion...................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................11
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................14

2PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
1. Introduction
The software project management can be defined as an art and rigorous planning based
on the leading software development projects. The software project management can be defined
as an art in which the software projects are previously planned, monitored, implemented and
controlled by efficient project managers. With the introduction of computers, the industry of
software development has grown rapidly (Fuller et al., 2017). In order to manage the new efforts
based on development, the various companies have majorly applied the knowledge of various
project management methods to design the project schedules, allocate costs and implement other
features for the purpose of project development.
Agile software development can be defined as an approach to the process of software
development based on which the solutions and requirements evolve with a collaborative effort.
In the 1990s, a vast number of methods based on software development had evolved in order to
handle the existing heavy weight methods, which were also considered as micro-managed,
planned and regulated (Abrahamsson et al., 2017). The methods of agile development break the
work of product development into various smaller increments that are able to minimize the
amount of planning of work. The various iterations are considered as short time-frames that
normally last for a few weeks.
This report thus discusses the history of a waterfall and agile method of software
development, the issues discovered and the success criteria of the software development process.
The report also discusses the current trends within the industry and the discussion about the
chosen methodologies that could put an impact on the organizational procedures.

3PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
2. Discussion
2.1 Waterfall History and Review
The Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method or the Structured approach are
defined as a systems approach for the purpose of conducting an analysis and design of the
Information Systems. This approach can also be defined as a waterfall method based on the
purpose of performing analysis and design over the information systems (George, 2019). The
principle design of the structured approach of waterfall method had initiated from the 1980s and
thus the several versions had evolved further.
On the other hand, the object-oriented analysis can be defined as a technical approach for
the purpose of analyzing and then design an application, business or system. The object-oriented
waterfall approach with the addition of visual modeling helps in fostering a better form of
stakeholder communication and improving product quality. The object-oriented approach has
been considered as the best form of a modern software engineering technique that is mainly
conducted in an incremental and iterative way (Dennis, Wixom & Tegarden, 2015). In the initial
days of the development of this approach, there were many different computing methodologies
in relation to objected-oriented modeling and software development. In that time there were no
such standard notations, process guides, and consistent terms, which were considered as the
major concerns during that time. The lack of such necessities had degraded the efficiency of
communication and also lengthened the learning curves.
The traditional structured approach views the entire system from a top-down view. It has
been described as a formalized step-by-step approach that is in relation to software development
and thus consists of various phases or activities (Buede & Miller, 2016). In both of the
approaches based on the Waterfall method, the process of software development follows a step-

4PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
by-step approach that primarily consists of activities or phases. The activities defined in a
particular phase should be completed in order to move to the next phase. Milestones are defined
in each of the phases and at the completion of each activity, the milestones are achieved. The
process model is situated at the center of the structured approach (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018).
This depicts the processes of business within the system. The primary model presents the
processes of the data flow diagram.
2.2 Waterfall Issues and Success
During the process of evaluation over the structured and object-oriented approach of
waterfall methodologies, it was found that there were some problems in both these approaches.
The standards notations, process guides, and consistent terms were mostly lacking at that time,
which lead to delay in project delivery and defining a proper schedule to the project (Giachetti,
2016). Further development within the object-oriented and structured approach had led to several
improvements in both these approaches.
These approaches divide the software life cycle into different stages. In the first stage, the
abstract of the entire project is defined. The descriptions to the problems are defined in order to
design the code and then finally test to before the delivery of the product. With the several
improvements to the software development approach based on the waterfall model, it can be
discussed that the object-oriented paradigm puts emphasis on the practice of code reusability and
modularity (Kuhrmann et al., 2017). The software life cycle based on both approaches divides
the entire program into several small stages that initiate with defining the abstract descriptions to
the exact problem. The development team is then responsible to understand the existing problem
and design code. This code would further be tested by the testing team before the final
deployment of the software product. The primary stage of the process of software development is

5PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
defined as analysis and design. In the object-oriented analysis, the functional model is done by
utilizing use cases and different abstract definitions of the vital objects (Despa, 2014). The
primary focus of object-oriented design is based on describing data, interactions, and behavior.
The design model provides the exact details that would be useful for programmers to implement
within the code of the application.
The Structured approach follows three important techniques. These are Logical Data
Modeling, Data flow modeling and Entity Event modeling. The structured approach also follows
a sequence of steps for the design of the application, which includes the process of analysis,
documentation, and design of tasks (Stoica et al., 2016). This approach conducts a feasibility
study, investigates the present environment, identifies the options within the business and
technical system, specifies each requirement and then works on the design of logical and
physical systems. After the development of research, the complete design would be able to
suggest the software engineers build the system according to the specific standards.
2.3 Agile History and Review
The agile software development process can be defined as an approach towards the
development of software based on which the requirements and prescribed solutions would evolve
with the help of a collaborative effort. The agile methodology started coming into effect from the
early 1990s with a variety of methods of software development (Levy, Short & Measey, 2015).
The software engineers at that time had decided to create a new methodology to remove the
methodology present within the current practices of software development during that time. The
methodology had consisted of various principles and values (Crowder & Friess, 2015). The agile
methodology is based on an iterative and quick developing software that is primarily focused on

6PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
the feedback of customers and effective communication between the involved people within the
process of building of the software product.
The most common issues that are faced during the implementation of agile
methodologies in several industrial projects are:
1. Communicating within the changing culture of the organization and meeting
expectations of customers. This is a huge problem in the process of implementing agile
methodology within the industry.
2. The process of procurement and buying of agile based software systems is expensive.
A proper form of training should be provided to the employees in order to help them in
understanding the process of using the software process (Conforto et al., 2014). In some cases,
the concerned team is not interested in adapting to the changes within the industry. The
fragmentation within several departments and a proper lack of awareness within the management
lead to problems in adoption to agile methodology.
3. There are also day-to-day operational problems after the implementation of agile
software methodology. The project managers believe that there is a decreased visibility towards
the progress of the project. In large projects, there are different complexities towards progressing
on the project work. Unplanned activities would lead to risks to the project and thus there is a
chance that the project might get failed.
The implementation of agile project management methodology within the industry needs
to follow certain steps:

7PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
1. A vision should be set towards designing a strategy. In this meeting, the agenda of the
business would be defined that would be addressed by the project. The target customers, need
statement, product name and benefits of a key product would be defined.
2. After the strategy is defined, the product owner would translate the organizational
vision into a product roadmap.
3. After the strategy has been planned, it would be important to set a tentative time for the
completion of each step of the project phase (Rasnacis & Berzisa, 2017). The product owner
would create a timeline based on the release of the software. The setting of a timeframe would
generally depend on the exact length of sprints and the periods of work. A typical release plan
would generally comprise of 3 to 5 sprints.
2.4 Agile Issues and Success
Historical Context of RAD and JAD
The Agile development framework had become popular in early 2007 because various
software developers had come to use the new software methodology. The Joint Application
Development (JAD) and Rapid Application Development (RAD) are defined as two techniques
that embodied the principles of agile.
The JAD is defined as a process of software design that would bring together various
sponsors, designers, analysts, and developers to help in discussing solutions. The basic success
criteria of JAD systems was to identify the limitations and project objectives. They would also
identify the critical success factors and define the project deliverables (Zheng et al., 2016). Based
on the identification of project objectives, the valuable participants would be selected, workshop
activities are conducted and then the deployment of the project would initiate.

8PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
On the other hand, RAD is defined as an iterative process of software development. In
this process, a prototype model would be designed, which would be responsible for answering
any particular question. The prototyping of user interface would help in the reduction of
pertaining risks based on presenting of finished software that would have an unacceptable user
interface (Guzmán et al., 2017). The primary idea of prototyping is to expose any part of a given
solution to the end user. This process is highly necessary to gain critical feedback from the end
user and then react to those feedbacks. The feedback from the end users is extremely important
as they would help the software designers to understand the areas in which improvements would
be needed. They would thus follow those prescribed instructions and thus solve queries.
However, with the principles of Agile and a proper definition of the use of RAD and
JAD, it would be clear that there is an overlapping of the three terms. The agile methodology is a
better consideration in which the techniques of RAD and JAD can be placed (Rosenberg et al.,
2017). The agile framework helps in presenting the community of software development with a
philosophy regarding software development. Hence, it can be discussed that both these existing
techniques would be able to fit within the framework for agile software development.
2.5 Observation of Current Industry Trends and Methodology Selection
The practices of software development have evolved in recent decades. There has been an
inclusion of several models and methods that have helped in enhancing the effectiveness and
efficiency within software projects. Based on focusing on the current trends within the software
development industry, it could be found that there are three major trends that are widely followed
for the practices of software development.
Firstly, the agile methods of software development are gaining high popularity based on
life cycle models. The agile methods are mostly better in dealing with the changing requirements

9PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
of users (Kaiser, El Arbi & Ahlemann, 2015). The various agile methods also help in the
promotion of a better kind of working relationship that also includes different analysts, testers,
developers, project managers, and end users.
Secondly, the testing of software is considered as an integral activity within the process
of software development. The process of conducting software testing is an indispensable part of
ensuring the quality of software. On a traditional part, the testing has been always been
considered as a distinct and separate stage towards the end of the process of software
development (Simpson et al., 2014). Various project managers also suggest that software testing
should be integrated into the software development life cycle in order to consider the various
negatives outcomes from the software.
In the current trends in the software development industry, six models have been
developed to engage different testers throughout the process of software development. These
engaging testers are helpful for the team to catch defects within the code in an early phase of
software development (Fenton & Bieman, 2014). The detection of errors in code and correcting
them would help the organization in cutting various costs of development. This is because fixing
of error codes after the development phase would increase the costs by a certain magnitude.
3. Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it could be concluded that the different trends in
methodologies of software development have various kind of important implications to the
research community and people involved with a particular project. The discussion focuses on the
use of waterfall and agile methods for the development of software. Research on the history of
these methodologies had led to the conclusion that before the implication of these methodologies

10PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
there used to several problems based on documenting of projects and properly planning the entire
schedule of the project. However, from the inception of the methodologies, the processes of
software development have rapidly smoothened. The discussion in this research focuses on the
use of waterfall and agile software development methodology that could be adopted within the
processes of industry based on bringing in changes within the process of the software industry.
In recent times, it has been seen that various organizations of software development
mainly focus on the adoption of agile development processes for progressing on the work of
projects. This study helps in discussing the history of the waterfall and agile methodologies and
also providing a centric view of the practices of software development. The study also covers a
review of the two software development methodologies, the trends within the present software
industry and their implications over the project development phase. A proper review over the
methodologies of software development could be helpful for students, educators and project
managers to help in developing a proper software that would be able to meet the standards of the
industry and also meet the expectation of customers. The proper form of identification of latest
trends about the use of latest practices of software development methodologies could help the
practitioners to deal and make better kind of tactical decisions in future research over the
development of software.

11PROJECT MANAGEMENT HISTORY AND RELEVANCE TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
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