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AGILE AND WATERFALL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Presented by:

Date

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Introduction

Agile is an incremental and iterative project management approach.
It’s based on principles that focuses more on people, results, collaboration, and flexible responses to change.
Waterfall is a traditional project management model for engineering.
Presentation compares agile and waterfall models.

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Characteristics of Agile

Collaboration a key factor
Constant focus on business value
Focused on quality level
Address common issues efficiently
Prioritizes customer experience and satisfaction

Collaboration is a key tool in agile model. There exist numerous facets to collaboration which require the leaders to understand and work jointly with the product owner towards success (ProofHub, 2019). The model recognizes the jig-saw importance of all workers and empower them to achieve both personal and organizational objectives.

Constant focus on business value. Agile promises to deliver solutions that help the organization to achieve its objectives (ProofHub, 2019). Agile aims to boost the customers’ experience by delivering to them products that meet their needs.

Focused on quality level. Quality is a primary element of agile that helps improve the qualities of products to better the productivity of the firm and achieve customer satisfaction (ProofHub, 2019). Agile focuses on technical excellence and best design.

Address common issues efficiently because it is flexible and easily accepts changes as things keep on changing.

Prioritizes customer experience and satisfaction by providing quality services and valuing the needs of the customers.

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Agile Versus Waterfall (Agile)

Agile

Incremental and iterative
Separates a project into sprints
For completing many small projects.
Focus on customer satisfaction
Requirements are prepared daily

Waterfall

Linear and sequential
Divides a project into phases
Helps complete one single project
Focus on successful project delivery.
Requirements are prepared once

Agile is an incremental and iterative approach that repeats itself to boost the productivity and performance of the organization (Lotz, 2018). Conversely, Waterfall is a linear and sequential approach. That involves accomplishment of one task before going to the next task.

Agile separates a project into sprints with specific tasks, milestones or deliverables while waterfall divides a project into phases, with various milestones to achieve.

Agile helps complete many small projects, therefore, is useful to many projects whereas waterfall helps complete one single project (Lotz, 201.

Agile introduces a product mindset with a focus on customer satisfaction while Waterfall focuses on successful project delivery.

In agile, the requirements are prepared on daily basis to provide a clear insight of the project process, while requirements are prepared once at the start in Waterfall.

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Agile Versus Waterfall (Agile) Contd…

Agile

Requirement changes allowed any time.
Testing performed concurrently with development.
Testing teams allowed to take part in requirements change.
Allow project manager to operate without dedicated PM.

Waterfall

Avoids scope changes after the project starts.
Testing phase comes only after the build phase.
Testing team does not take part in making changes.
Dedicated project manager a must.

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Benefits of Agile and Waterfall

Agile is ideal for projects with non-fixed funding.
Agile also empower teams to manage projects.
Agile is a customer-focused approach, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.
Waterfall provides defined team roles; thereby facilitating accountability.
It provides clear measurements of project progress.
Waterfall model provides defined scope of work, hence providing clear goals and roles to workers.

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References

Cobb, C. G. (2015). The project managers guide to mastering agile: principles and practices for an adaptive approach. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Lotz, M. (2018, July 5). Waterfall vs. Agile: Which Methodology is Right for Your Project? Retrieved from https://www.seguetech.com/waterfall-vs-agile-methodology/
ProofHub. (2019, June 3). What are the main characteristics of an Agile project management methodology? Retrieved on October 18,2021 from https://blog.proofhub.com/what-are-the-main-characteristics-of-an-agile-project-management-methodology-e28c4bd59b55