Agile vs. Waterfall in a nutshell

Why Agile? This is the very first question anyone would come across when start googling around this topic. There have been many great opinions and ideas to answer this question. On top of those, what I personally believe is that anyone could take a quick peek at the agile manifesto, get the answer that replies to their specific situation/struggle which leads them studying on agile methodology.

Values of the Agile Manifesto :

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

The manifesto says that “While there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.”

Comparison with traditional methodologies like the waterfall is always a good idea to understand what agile actually brought to the table. Different teams and organizations have different working mechanisms that could lead to success. When we start comparing agile with waterfall we could see that in a general frame the main difference is the oriented focus. Waterfall is plan-oriented, on the other hand, Agile is value-oriented.

Let’s take a deep dive into the waterfall first and assume that there has been a wrong prediction on cost somehow, for example, the cost might be increased over time. Since the plan was so strict, to be able to achieve a successful result, there needs to be some kind of adjustments on time, maybe moving deadlines(if possible) or asking the team for overtime. In some short time projects and in some bold organizations this risk is maybe acceptable. But in fact, this is still a risk!

The same risk also could be applied to agile, but this risk could be eliminated over time cause agile is adaptive to change. The cost-time-functionality triangle works in sync. The focus is to deliver small pieces of working product(called MVP — Most Viable Product) and make new small plans based on the measured value.

This continued delivery and feedback mechanism is actually the key of Agile, which makes sure that all plans can be reshaped around collected feedback, business value will be increased, risks will be eliminated, and finally, success will be achieved.