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by kuschku
3875 days ago
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> If the requirements change, you must update your software. How does waterfall handle changing requirements? It doesnt. How does agile handle change? By assuming everyone will update and has no issue with all third-party accessories constantly breaking. If you can’t ever change your code after you’ve written it once, then Agile isn’t useful to you. |
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Maybe I've had a twisted experience of Agile, but it seems like its most useful when you are working on a greenfield project, with a customer that maybe doesn't even know what they want, but they know they want something. So you get some requirements, and build a prototype. Then you show it off, and they make some comments, (generally like: "Can it run in the Cloud? Is it Social?", "Could that icon be more of a cornflower-blue?"). Sometimes you get useful feedback also... Then you go back and refine the prototype. Rinse and repeat, and eventually it does enough that they are happy.
Even when you do know "exactly" what you are building, I would still prefer starting from a bare-bones version, and building out from there. Unless you've built this exact thing before, planning it all out beforehand will invariably miss some Rumsfeldian unknown-unknown technical detail, which might tip up the whole apple-cart of the carefully, laboriously, expensively, laid-out plan.
It's not like its 1995, and releasing a software version involved burning thousands of CDs, printing manuals, boxing it up, and distributing the boxes to retail stores. And most of us are not launching the software we write out beyond low-earth orbit.