Software Development: Waterfall to Agile (Scrum)

What does it take to migrate a software development team from the traditional waterfall methodology to an agile methodology? For the majority of my career, the waterfall methodology was the method of choice and was what I used to manage projects. As agile methodologies were introduced, they became controversial as well as intriguing to me. Could these new methodologies really address the concerns of the waterfall approach effectively? Were they just fads that would go away? Could I accept the change myself and switch from a methodology that I had been using for years? These were some of the initial questions I had, and over the last few years I have had the opportunity to become a practicing agilist. In this article I will discuss the waterfall methodology, the agile (scrum) methodology, the obstacles I and others have faced transitioning teams from the waterfall to the agile methodology, and how the agile manifesto should be the focal point for the agile (scrum) methodology.

First, I present an introduction to the waterfall methodology. The waterfall methodology, sometimes referred to as “big design up front,” is a model that begins with one initiation phase and then proceeds from one phase to the next in a purely sequential manner. Typically, the first phase is project approval, followed by requirements gathering, design, development, and …