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The Requirements Balance: Agile, Waterfall, and Iterative Approaches in Software Development

Explore various requirement gathering techniques, Agile, Waterfall, and Iterative processes, and the importance of good requirements in software development. Discover the advantages and disadvantages of Agile, Waterfall, and Iterative approaches, and delve into the debate on the optimal requirements methodology. Engage in discussions on balancing too many or too few requirements, level of detail, and incorporating Agile practices into iterative development.

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The Requirements Balance: Agile, Waterfall, and Iterative Approaches in Software Development

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  1. The Requirements Balance Test Managers Forum - April ‘08 Stevan Zivanovic stevan@probatur.com

  2. Outline • Requirements and Techniques • Agile • Waterfall • Iterative • What is a good requirement? • Debate

  3. Requirement Techniques • Good requirements gathering is NOT easy • Analysts need to be able to: • Familiar with multiple analysis techniques • Accurately interpret the customers needs • Translate the customers language into something for technical people • Determine how much to document

  4. Requirement Types • Reference: Software Requirements Styles and Techniques – Soren Lauesen, Addison Wesley 2002 • IEEE 830 – 1998 – Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specification

  5. Why Bother? • Requirements are used to: • Gain agreement from the Business • Act as a legal document • Define the contents of a project • Defined what to build • AND define what to test

  6. Agile - Process • High level features defined • Refined during a “sprint” • Document only what is needed • Depend on good interaction with business during development

  7. Agile Advantages: • Keeps the business informed and can rapidly respond to business changes • Very effective if the business do not have a clear view on the end solution • No need for long requirements capture phase Disadvantages: • A lot of refactoring as a result of not having the system in place to fully reconcile changes • Not enough time spent on challenging the business model

  8. Waterfall - Process • High level requirement defined, reviewed and agreed • Low level requirements defined, reviewed and agreed • Specification defined, reviewed and agreed • Develop and test

  9. Waterfall Advantages: • Process modelled and all aspects analysed • Full agreement by all stakeholders before development Disadvantages: • Requirements fixed possibly years before delivery – but the business changes • Large requirements management overhead • Users do not truly understand what they need

  10. Iterative (Unified Process) • Define Use Cases up front and gain formal agreement • Refine and modify requirements as project progresses

  11. Iterative (UP) Advantages: • As Agile • Some of Waterfall Disadvantages: • Some of Agile • Less of Waterfall

  12. What is a good requirement? • SMART • Have a suitable diagram • Be supported by all stakeholders (business/user, analysts, project managers, developers, testers, support) • Provide sufficient information • Be clearly related to other requirements and goals

  13. The Requirements Balance • Which is the “best” dev methodology • Too many requirements vs too few • Requirement techniques – too many or not enough • Level of detail • How relevant/believable are the requirements

  14. For Discussion • Does Iterative development offer an optimal requirements approach? • Do we need written requirements? • What can we as tester do to optimise requirements? • Can we blend Agile practices with Iterative requirement development? • The challenge of 3rd party development / testing • Are some Quality/Non Functional requirements implicit?

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