Agile vs Waterfall

Introduction

This page is dedicated to constructive banter on the advantages and disadvantages of Agile Development compared to Waterfall Development techniques. It seems like people push too hard one way or the other usually, and suffer from over structure and under structure.

Agile Advantages

• It's good for iterative creativity
• It protects the project members from changing expectations of an owner
• It has been measured to perform 40% faster than waterfall (wikispeed)
• Workers choose their work and are therefore more satisfied with work.
• It is significantly more scalable than waterfall in that it prevents management from micromanaging.
• It contributes towards the democratization of the workplace which is an imperative step in the new (distributive) economy. (trustistheonlycurrency, sacred economics)
• It contributes towards a healthier working environment.

Agile Disadvantages

• It's good for iterative creativity, but not to get a big project done ON TIME.
• Consider the place Agile is lacking.. and why you'd want a gantt chart... When there are external constraints.. like the delivery of supplies, that contribute to a critical path and require advance planning and an understanding of relationships between initiatives.. say in order to build a house before winter and there's a 3 month lead time on the roofing etc. This concerns could be easily carried in a scrum-type layout with an added feature showing dependencies.

Waterfall Advantages

• It is driven by time and thus enables projects to be delivered on-time regardless of the lives these constraints may impact

Waterfall Disadvantages

• Old-school, top-down power dynamics.
• Does not account for changes in the owner's requirements