How do you customize Agile and Waterfall SDLC for your industry?

Agile and Waterfall are fundamentally different. Agile is based off manufacturing (Kanban)with the iterative process designed for QA. Waterfall is construction, like building a home and is vertical. with some tasks in the WBS being able to fastrack. Agile is perfect for Software Dev initiatives Waterfall works with higher level initiatives such as relocations, expansions, network upgrades, etc...People are desperately trying to put a round peg in an oval hole

An Agile-Waterfall hybrid may combine both methodologies by initially defining a detailed project scope, akin to a Waterfall. This scope can then be broken into Agile-like iterations for development, fostering flexibility and collaboration. Regular reviews and retrospectives maintain transparency and adaptability. This approach suits complex projects with evolving requirements, leveraging Waterfall's structure and Agile's responsiveness. Challenges might include documentation upkeep and preventing scope creep. However, successful implementation would hinge on a skilled team, clear communication, and a willingness to adapt processes to ensure a harmonious blend of both methodologies.

It's important that you involve the team to identify the right methodology. Agile as a top-down mandate will fail, it must have buy-in from the people who will be working in it every day in order to succeed.

Agile and Waterfall are two contrasting approaches to software development: 1. Project Flexibility: ? Agile: Agile is highly adaptable to changing requirements and priorities. ? Waterfall: Waterfall is less flexible; changes are expensive and time-consuming once a phase is initiated. 2. Client Involvement: ? Agile: Clients are actively involved, providing feedback and reviewing work at the end of each iteration. ? Waterfall: Client involvement mainly occurs at the beginning and the end of the project. 3. Delivery Time: ? Agile: Agile aims for frequent, smaller releases, potentially delivering value sooner. ? Waterfall: Waterfall tends to have a longer delivery time, as the full project is developed before release.

Deciding between Waterfall and Agile SDLC involves a strategic choice, starting with understanding the "why" before delving into the "how." For instance, during my experience, when faced with projects characterized by tight deadlines, narrow margins, and intense customer scrutiny, the choice to opt for Agile approach was obvious. Agile' s sprint-based structure enables concurrent task completion, fostering innovation. Conversely, when dealing with projects comprising multiple modules and interdependent activities, the Waterfall approach proved more effective. Its emphasis on comprehensive documentation offers insights into task sequencing. Additionally, meticulous planning becomes pivotal in the Waterfall model to minimize change requests.

Remember that if you have stable, clear (and correct) requirements you are not doing development work. And it turns out very costly to start Waterfall believing you have clear, stable, requirements and find you haven't. Waterfall is fine for Construction work (particularly Civil Engineering and similar,) where the design, plans, material costing etc. can be done up-front. It's a really bad choice for software development, where the construction is automated. The suggested constraints "high reliability", "security standards", "fixed budgets and timelines" are not good criteria to use when choosing between Agile and Waterfall. You need adequate skills to achieve these no matter which approach you use. Just ensure you have those skills.

Underdeveloped and underinvested testing and deployment pipelines can cause releases to be a large waterfall event. Code development could be done with agile, but releases could be done with waterfall. Working backwards with waterfall, the code must be ready to ride the release.

?? Tailoring Agile and Waterfall for Banking ?? Adapting SDLC methodologies is crucial in banking. Agile's flexibility suits the fast-paced sector, enabling quick shifts in response to market trends and customer expectations. It drives innovation for mobile banking and online experiences. Meanwhile, Waterfall aligns with banking's focus on security and compliance, ensuring meticulous planning for core systems. A hybrid approach can balance agility and stability, using Agile for innovation and Waterfall for critical backend systems. Tailored SDLC methodologies pave the way for efficient, secure, and customer-centric banking experiences. ???? #AgileInBanking #WaterfallSDLC

Waterfall SDLC is generally more suited to industries that have a sequential or a stage wise approach and the business and delivery teams have a clear idea about what to expect as the outcome. If you are serving clients in the Construction, Manufacturing, Aerospace, Pharmaceutical or Drug discovery industry or government and public services, aligning with a Waterfall may suit the planning and execution. You can naturally identify pockets of spaces where Agile can be blended into the mix. There may be a strong risk and cost impact for changes in design, process, formulation, certification, tax laws and compliance made in late stages.

Though Agile is being adopted widely, it is not a silver bullet. Waterfall is still a priority based on the scenario when the requirements and expectations are very clear and where the iterative delivery will not yield any incremental value. This is also suitable on fixed bid/budget projects where any changes in the requirements are handled via a change request process resulting in timeline and/or cost updates. The process is straightforward and follows SDLC phases in sequence. Customization is possible in terms of the cost, time, #of resources, skills etc based on the requirements and business scenario. Risk management is a key factor to get quality outcome. Adding buffers (cost, timeline) at various levels is one of the practice.

Never hybridize Agile and Waterfall on the same development stream. They are inimical to each other. If you need both approaches, take the products of one stream and feed them into a separate stream, and use "traditional" management approaches to manage the dependencies between streams. This is the normal recommended approach where products have both tangible and software 'components'.

As Paul said, the temptation to take a hybrid approach is often driven by hierarchical and siloed management, not by the project itself. This creates the need to engage in complicated and regular portfolio planning to level resources in the organization. A more typical approach within agile is to create feature teams where every person necessary to complete a feature is assigned to the team. In my experience, periodic planning within an organization leads to resource inefficiencies because the delivery of features follows the same waterfall-like process, which becomes synchronized with the period. This leads to the typical boom/bust between Developers and QA.

Hybrid lets your team mix things up (Agile and Waterfall) for complex projects. It's like having a toolbox, but be careful! Don't use it to just fit into a pre-set plan – that can waste time and resources. Focus on what works for your project, not a rigid schedule. This approach can empower your team, but avoid getting stuck in complex planning that slows everyone down.

Hybrid is not a framework, but rather a customized approach. It will depend on the needs of the team, CI/CD maturity, and the goals of the group. Being hybrid is the most empowered route for teams. This is because the team gets to decide to do things that suit them, not follow a rigid format.

These is the framework that gives the best results. It allows you to use the best of both worlds. The key is knowing what to incorporate of each. waterfall or Agile and when. You can establish your own formula and tweak it to your organization needs. Good luck

There is no one size ( or method) that fits all. SDLC should be customized based on a number of factors. To name a few, Complexity of the project, cloud vs on prem development, skill level of the team members, maturity level of organization with respect to change management process and Organization's risk appetite. Organizations should have the flexibility to choose the SDLC that suits best for a project by analyzing the above listed factors.

Consider the factors such as org requirements, team requirements, the development environment, the testing environment and CI/CD maturity.

?? Tailoring SDLC for Your Industry: Key Considerations ?? Customizing SDLC is an ongoing endeavor demanding thoughtful assessment. Factor in project scale, team skills, customer input, environmental constraints, and business objectives. It's a dynamic process driving industry success. ????

Agreed, another way of looking at this; two specific contributors to successful SDLC implementation are DevOps and Cloud transformation DevOps: with its robust CI/CD principles, Reliability, Security etc, will help with building quicker, smarter and safer Cloud: and its shift left philosophy will get developers more in control eliminating the need for depending on infrastructure teams

We all know that there is no on size fits all in the IT Industry. We may adopt a hybrid approach of Waterfall and Agile. I have delivered projects in an Hybrid approach. Having said that it is not the model of testing but the techniques that we bring some of them may include shift-left, Automation First or Automate Early, Deep dive into IT landscape and impact analysis of the as-is Vs to-be.

In many industries, Agile is better suited to customer engagement, because a shorter development cycle leads to the ability to put product in the customer's hands quickly and receive important feedback. Waterfall is more suited to highly regulated or safety-critical environments where the importance of thorough and expensive validation outweighs the need for rapid iteration and customer feedback. However, in those environments, it can still be helpful to iterate through the development process and get QA feedback as early in the development cycle as possible, rather than a traditional "throw it over the wall" QA process.

You can also accomplish all these things by properly implementing Agile values and an Agile framework. I have customers all over the world using Scrum and being amazingly productive. Customization often indicates a need for a proper understanding of a framework or mindset.

It is important to Evaluate if a team that claims to be Agile isn't my practice Waterfall and vice versa. Many claims of being Agile yet sometimes fail to adjust to important changes which might affect the business or software positively. Waterfall or/and Agile booths have their advantages and flops when but Will work well if chosen for the right project and it's principal are followed to the details. As much as the claims of a name are awesome the goal is to achieve major milestones, and have the software delivered on-time and functioning as expected.

For each individual stream process, don't hybridize. You need to make one decision "is it likely (or indeed possible) to get the requirements right up front?" - If it is, then build a process that WILL get the requirements right up-front, and reap the benefits. It will look very much like Waterfall. If it isn't, then build a process that copes well with an understanding of the requirements that grows over time. Given what we know today, that will be very much like agile approaches. It is the height of ignorance to believe these two fundamentally different approaches, with fundamentally different drivers, can be hybridized with any hope of success, in a single development stream process.

1st, WHY Agile? Understand what your organization is attempting to resolve. Agile is a tool; no organization adopts Agile for the sake of Agile. Once you understand the business drivers, Agile, & frameworks such as Scrum, SAFe, & DAD, provide you with a toolbox to select different tools for different problems. Your flavor of Agile or waterfall will then resonate with your business faster than a tick box, copying & paste from commercial frameworks. Almost all distributors make it clear that their methodologies are not prescriptive; they simply provide a large pool of tools to choose from. Agile or Waterfall are a means to an end, NOT THE END, so choose wisely & remember one size does not fit all.

In software development the selection of a methodology is somewhat secondary to what the business partner(s) require. Getting the initial business needs identified is almost always a waterfall effort. Good, fast, cheap... you can pick any two, but you rarely get all three. However, other factors such as modularization, testing cycle, upstream inputs and downstream impacts affect the timing and size of the sprints. Then there are the customers, of which there could be two, the "business" customer, and the "end user/customer". In cases, where the you are developing software for the business but the end user is their customer, great care must be taken in the testing phase. You don't need A newsworthy event that impacts the stock price!

It is easy to get too wrapped up in communicating specific processes and to define the use of frameworks to meet your domain's needs. There is a place for this. But at the same time there is no substitute for communicating guiding philosophies specific to your domain. And sometimes these guiding philosophies may get to your organization's ethos and culture. If a developer knows that - on x, y, or z date there was a suspected data breach of q for example, and ever since the entire organization has been sensitive to this subject, and it is of primary importance. The individual developer can made decisions about gray areas in SDLC based on this knowledge and everyone benefits.