The document compares traditional waterfall project management to agile project management. With waterfall, requirements are gathered from users and handed off between teams who work in isolation, resulting in a product that often does not meet user needs. Agile uses rapid iterations where a team builds and tests features incrementally with customer involvement, producing a product that satisfies requirements through approved iterations.

1. Understanding Agile
What was
Imagined!
What was
really needed!
Prepared by: Nigel Thurlow
Last Updated: 17th
April 2015
Version: 4
E H
Agile Project Management
Design Build Test UAT What was
delivered!
Requirements
Changes
Changes
Requirements
Changes
BAs
The Requirements
Merry-Go-Round
Many months before you see results!
What was
Imagined!
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Silos of Work
Waterfall Project Management
A B DC
A
The customer often has a grand vision of
the product he desires, but this is often far
removed from what he actually needs!
B
Months are spent with users explaining to business analysts what
they want, and this leads to endless changes until typically, time
and money runs out. The result – huge volumes of complex
requirements to implement.
C
Requirements are progressively handed off between
groups who work in isolation to build and test the
product, while the customer is not involved in product
development until after everything is built and delivered.
D
The end result is a product that is often a mere representation of what
the customer envisioned, with essential features missing or working
poorly, and with embellishments he didn’t need. Further investment
will now be needed to correct these issues.
E
The customer still has a grand vision of the
product he desires, and this is still often far
removed from what he actually needs!
F
Product development proceeds as a series of small iterations
(experiments) with each building on the last, incrementally
creating and testing the product features in short ‘sprints’.
G
The customer is part of the team during the product
development, and the team constantly demonstrates
their progress and receives approval to continue.
The end result is a product that meets the needs of the customer, and is
designed and built with just the right amount of features and functions to
satisfy the requirements, and has already been fully tested by the customer.
Design
Build
UAT
Rapid Iteration
Design
Build
Test
UAT
Rapid Iteration
H
Design
Build
Test
UAT
Rapid Iteration
Test
F G