Sunday, September 11, 2011

Agile vs Waterfall – Improved Performance is NOT Guaranteed

Michael Marchi reminds us that Agile doesn't always perform faster than Waterfall. While Agile helps enables us to move faster, he reminds us that we still need to adhere to a robust definition of "done."
If allowed to go too far, a project team that tolerates this behavior could underperform even a Waterfall project. Agile done well will produce a positive effect. Agile done poorly can be worse than not doing Agile at all. The missed opportunities, nagging design flaws, overlooked defects, and the low quality that results is referred to as “Technical Debt”. The yellow shaded area represents this lost productivity.

Read the entire blog post here.