Before discussing advantage and disadvantage of Agile, we need to know what is Agile. Based on definition from Wikipedia, Agile is a software development model that promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, adopts iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change. The greatest feature of Agile is rapid.
A classic Agile development process is dividing project into small incremental releases. The cycle time of each release shortens from months to weeks. In addition, Agile focuses on communication between developer and customer. Through face to face conversation, developer can meet the dynamic change of customer.
However, Agile also has some disadvantages. For large project, it is very difficult to assess the effort required at the beginning of the software development life cycle. Moreover, in order to improve the speed, Agile partly ignore documenting and designing which may cause the future problems when the program becomes larger and larger. Also, project based on Agile might deviate from the track if customer is not clear with the target and always change mind, because Agile emphasize connection with customer and rapid response to customer.
Obviously, we can’t simply say that Agile is good or bad. The reasonable way is that we should make decision whether Agile is suitable for our project before adopting it.
A classic Agile development process is dividing project into small incremental releases. The cycle time of each release shortens from months to weeks. In addition, Agile focuses on communication between developer and customer. Through face to face conversation, developer can meet the dynamic change of customer.
However, Agile also has some disadvantages. For large project, it is very difficult to assess the effort required at the beginning of the software development life cycle. Moreover, in order to improve the speed, Agile partly ignore documenting and designing which may cause the future problems when the program becomes larger and larger. Also, project based on Agile might deviate from the track if customer is not clear with the target and always change mind, because Agile emphasize connection with customer and rapid response to customer.
Obviously, we can’t simply say that Agile is good or bad. The reasonable way is that we should make decision whether Agile is suitable for our project before adopting it.
Hi Jingmei,
ReplyDeleteGood work with the post. I like the way you introduced the post and then went on to explain what agile is. I like how you decide to explore both sides of the coin and do not limit yourself. You want to give a fair introduction to the topic as well as point out the cons of Agile methodology. This post can very well be used to introduce a newbie to Agile while giving him the full picture.