Why Agile Approach

Waterfall Approach

We collect the requirements and determine that a four wheeled vehicle with a diesel engine, four seats, and alloy wheels is needed. Oh, it must be red!  This is a complex ask and over the next two years a team of engineers work towards and deliver a fast red car that runs on diesel.  In the meantime, you have not had a car to use.  Also, in the interim the rules of diesel cars have changed, and they are no longer popular.

Two years pass without a car and now the one you have cannot be used as the marketplace has moved on.  You still must pay for it though!

Agile Apporach

Rather than asking what you need (requirements), we ask “why a car?”.  We learn that you want to get from the shops to home before your ice cream melts.  The engineers quickly and cheaply build a skateboard.  The team haven’t forgotten the end goal of a car and haven’t stopped working on your project.  But you have the simplest, cheapest, quickest thing to get your ice cream home before it melts.  This is in Agile speak the MVP.  You use the skateboard and give feedback – I keep falling off!  The engineers adapt the skateboard into a scooter with handlebars.  Over time this adapting refines the output to a bike, motor bike, then car.  The car was built with an electric engine to fit the new rules and blue for your new favourite colour.  But very early on you can get home before your ice cream melted.

The same project for a different person found that when we got to the motorbike, speed was less a priority and space was important.  Instead of building a car a small van with a freezer box was needed.  This was learnt as the project delivered increasingly better solutions.

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