Traditional -vs- Agile

[Andrew.Hillipar]

A Comparison between Agile and Traditional Software Development Methodologies

[JimLombard]

Andrew, this is one of few documents that recognize the inception of Agile type methods at IBM, back ~40 yrs ago ("Chief Programmer Approach"). It also does a good job recognizing some of the shortcomings of Agile, without negating the whole process and the benefits it can provide.

Thank you for posting it here. Although I am familiar with the material in it, I had not seen it presented quite this way - very interesting.

[Andrew.Hillipar]

Yeah, both IBM and HP at the time had seen the value in informal, frequent meetings, as well as the need to have a more flexible approach. Their failing may have been the rigid way in which they wanted to divide everything into small slices and as Larry Constantine said at the time “not every problem can be sliced and diced into the right pieces for speedy incremental refinement.”

The Agile process has been totally refined nowadays, but his conclusion may still be valid. There are some project where Agile may not be the best practice.