Advantages and disadvantages of agile software development

Kiel - In the beginning there is the goal - the customer's wish and its implementation in a company software. But how resilient is the initial design of the solution in the course of a long development period, which often goes hand in hand with the conventional approach to software projects? All the more so in view of ever faster development cycles for business use cases and technologies. There is a great danger of ending up with a gap between the delivered software and the required functionalities - especially if requirements have not been described precisely enough.

This gap in certain development requirements was virtually the birthplace of agile software development. In contrast to classic models (e.g., waterfall or V-model), in which one works in long, sequential phases, the approach here is different. Short iterations with a respective requirement profile for a small part of the software follow one another. The advantage is that these can be tested immediately and, if necessary, supplemented by further components. Flexibility, product quality and time-to-market are strong advocates of this approach.

However, this approach is not generally suitable, but only for suitable projects: Stanislaw Nasin's blog post reveals which projects are suitable.