The Pros And Cons Of Agile And Plan-Driven Process And Methods

Neither agile nor plan-driven processes and methods provide a silver bullet.
As per Boehm and Turner concepts of balancing agility and Discipline six exemplary conclusions were made, of which first one is that neither agile nor plan-driven processes and methods provide a silver bullet which implies that either of the agile or plan-driven approach is not applicable in all situations. Both the processes deals with the essential software engineering complications like complexity, changeability, invisibility and conformity while both the processes have its own advantages and disadvantages. Agile method to some extent achieves changeability and invisibility as the project’s strategies and its implementation is discussed and shared among all the members of a team whereas it fizzles to handle complexity of the project and conformity. Also agile method fails in scaling up to large complex projects. Plan driven concepts handle conformity and invisibility as thorough documentation and extensive planning is done. But it fails in handling changeability as it is difficult to do re-documentation every time and also fails to handle increasing complexity as new systems are added which involves enterprise integration. Hence it can be said that neither agile nor plan-driven processes provide silver bullets instead they can be termed as lead bullets individually.
Agile and plan-driven processes and methods have home grounds where one clearly dominates the other.

Considering the set of conditions under which the project is most likely to succeed home grounds are derived both for the agile and plan driven processes. As the project differ from the home ground conditions the risk in using the approach also increases. Analyzing these home ground factor...

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...pproaches for achieving balance between agile and plan driven processes like crystal orange, DSDM, FDD and lean development. Same is followed for plan driven methods that are more lightweight like RUP (Rational Unified Process).Basing upon the project requirements the methods best suitable to the project are developed with a blend of both agile and plan driven approaches.

It is better to build your process and method up than to tailor it down.

Generally plan driven processes practices developing all inclusive approaches designed to be tailoring it down to fit a particular situation. But tailoring down all inclusive methods requires highly experienced staff and leads to unnecessary expenses in time and resources, Instead it is recommended that we build up our own method starting with minimal sets of practices and adding extras only if it is necessary and justified.