Everyone seems to be excited and talking about Agile product development these days. Let’s see why. Getting a product to market is more challenging and competitive than ever before. Adaptability is crucial, and many traditional product development methods overlook the importance of that flexibility. It’s not that traditional development methods are inherently bad – they simply lack in the necessary flexibility to be effective. The primary objectives of product development are to reduce time to market, increase product quality, and save money, all while delivering a product that exceeds client expectations. To begin this guide, let’s review the Waterfall model, a more traditional approach to product development that you may already be familiar with. The Waterfall Development Model If you can imagine progress flowing from top to bottom in a cascading fashion, you will begin to get a sense of the allegorical origins of the ‘Waterfall’ method. First used in the manufacturing and construction industries, the Waterfall model follows a sequential design process. In other words, each of its seven phases of development must be satisfied in order to move on to the next. If an error occurs in a later phase, the Waterfall model necessitates returning to an earlier phase in the sequence. In essence, this results in having to retrace a number of steps in between. Needless to say, a mistake in a later phase can be both expensive and time-consuming. To put it simply, a model that relies upon moving through only one of seven sequential phases at a time will be slow, tedious, and without flexibility. Thankfully, the Agile product development methodology has demonstrated the...
