Agile Vs Traditional Software Development: A Comparative Study

Comparison of Traditional Software Development Methods with Agile Methodology

Neeraj Kumar Saklani, Abhishek Tomar, Baddi University Abstract Agile Methodology provides us a platform to develop software in an efficient and effective manner. Agile Methodology provides more of a people oriented approach rather than a process oriented. Nowadays most of the Software development Organization starts following agile methodology to gain customer satisfaction and to improve the quality of the software. Extreme programming and SCRUM gain a more popularity which made agile approaches used more widely. In this paper there is comparison between the traditional software development methods with agile method.

INTRODUCTION

In the last few year the

As Agile mainly focuses on software quality demanded by the customer whereas the traditional approaches focuses on process. Agile methodology can be achieved with the convenience of team member and top management.

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE MODELS

Traditional development methods are also known as Heavyweight methodologies. In the traditional approach first we schedule a planning of the software development and based on these all the requirement is gathered at the beginning and finally a master design is implemented and no changes are made after this phase whereas in Agile Methodology new changes or requirement are welcome even late in the development. The traditional method follow a sequential approach i.e. output of one phase will act as an input of another phase. Moreover, the requirements in the traditional methods are fixed as compare to the agile methods. LINEAR SEQUENTIAL

Agile methodology is also known as lightweight methodology. This was developed to overcome the drawbacks of the traditional development methods. Agile methodology providing high priority to customer participation rather than process development. In Agile, testing is done by the customer itself after every phase as customer is involved throughout the life cycle of the software. Agile life cycle contains mainly six phases in its development i.e. Pre project planning (first cycle), Start,

Construction, Release, Production and Retirement. In the first phase the goal of the project and its market perception are identified. It helps in identifying the potential stakeholders and their goals.

Figure5: Agile Life Cycle

EXTREME PROGRAMMING (XP)

Extreme programming is an lightweighted agile methodology used in small to medium sized team. Extreme programming is one of the most popular agile processes. The first on extreme programming was started in 1996. The main focus of the extreme programming is customer satisfaction and to deliver a product more frequently. In the extreme programming the changes in requirement are always welcomed even late in the development. It mainly focuses on teamwork comprising of manager, customer and developer. The team self-organizes around the problem to solve it as efficiently as