Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
There are many project management methodologies which one can choose from when starting a new project. The purpose of this article is to analyze the most known methodologies, Agile and Waterfall, in order to determine which is the most suitable for a software project.
We propose a practical study by analyzing the results of a survey designed to capture the experience of developers with the aforementioned methodologies. We will focus on the Scrum and Kanban Agile methods and Waterfall to analyze the findings of the study.
Given the results of the study, we concluded that there is no silver bullet solution when it comes to choosing the methodology for a project, as numerous factors need to be accounted for. Waterfall will be a better solution for small projects that have well-defined requirements that will not change, while Agile is preferred when continuous delivery and feedback are important, requirements are not well defined and time to market is more important than releasing a full feature version.
KEYWORDS: Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, Project Management
INTRODUCTION
Kanban [1] was first introduced as a scheduling method for assembly lines in Toyota factories. It was developed to improve the workflow and to maintain a high level of production. Despite its modest roots, it was quickly acknowledged worldwide as an efficient way to "organize" projects. Kanban was transformed into an abstract concept that could be applied to different sectors and industries, thanks to its efficiency.
Kanban is composed of five key stages: visualizing the workflow, limiting work-inprogress, managing the workflow, making each and every step unambiguous and ultimately evolving as one single and precise mechanism.
The aim of Kanban is to remove any "bottlenecks" from a streamlined process and to maximize efficiency and collaborative teamwork across the whole team. This goal has led to the creation of the Kanban board, which holds 4 different sets that should describe any task affiliated to the current project:
* Ideas - these are tasks that are still in a state of ambiguity and there are multiple discussions between members whether the task or feature should be implemented or not ("is it too time-consuming?", "is it profitable?", "what are the pros and the cons?")
* To do - these tasks have passed the...