this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
474 points (89.2% liked)
Technology
59300 readers
4940 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Traditionally (as in 20+ years ago), software got developed according to the Waterfall model or V-model or similar. This required a documentation of all the requirements before a project could be started. (Certain software development fields do still work that way due to legal requirements.)
This was often a failure, because the requirements did not actually match what was needed, not to mention that the real requirements often shifted throughout development.
Agile, on the other hand, starts out development and figuring out the requirements pretty much in parallel. The customers get a more tangible picture of what the software actually looks like. The software developers also take over the role of requirements engineers, of domain experts, which helps them make more fitting software architecture decisions. And you can more easily cancel a project, if it turns out to not be needed anymore or whatever (which is also why a cancellation percentage is misleading).
The trouble with Agile, on the other hand, is that projects can get started with really no idea what the goal even is, and often with not enough budget reserved to actually get them completed (obviously, that may also be a failure state; if the project is promising enough, customers will find the money for it somewhere).
Also, you do spend a lot of time as a software dev in working out those requirements.
But yeah, basically pick your poison, and even if people like to complain about Agile methology, it's what most of the software development world considers more successful.