50 votes
Accepted

How can a Scrum team work with a Waterfall team

Pretend the Waterfall team is an outside contractor Since you're interfacing with the Waterfall team's code solely via an API, just pretend you're hiring an outside contractor to create that code for ...
Monty Harder's user avatar
19 votes

How can a Scrum team work with a Waterfall team

First of all, make it known to your stakeholders that there is a project risk in your project. The waterfall team is asking for things (final, unchanging requirements) that you don't have at the start ...
Bart van Ingen Schenau's user avatar
18 votes

Designing for the future in an agile environment

Really good question. Really hard to answer. Here is my two cents contribution. Agile showed up as a response to the practices of the late nineties for building software, practices that assumed you ...
Bogdan's user avatar
  • 15k
14 votes
Accepted

Designing for the future in an agile environment

TL;DR Trying to "future proof" your data is done by making your tools, processes, and data structures flexible, not by fixing them for eternity. You do this by embracing test-first database ...
Todd A. Jacobs's user avatar
  • 50.1k
10 votes

Designing for the future in an agile environment

The agile approach does not necessarily imply shortsightedness. Depending on the problem domain, you may have a very complete understanding (in your example, the industry exists for quite some time, ...
Hans-Martin Mosner's user avatar
8 votes

Big 4 scrum consultant giving bad advice - correct or let fail?

I have been in a similar situation (in a retail bank), with consultants offering what they call 'enterprise Agile'. The result was waterfall and highly problematic. The consultancies are typically ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
8 votes

Designing for the future in an agile environment

How should a PM reconcile the wish to deliver something quickly, which may require extensive rework to add functionality in the future, versus doing extensive design up front then being able to ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
7 votes

Are there differences in Test plans for an agile model and a traditional model?

My in-Sprint testplans always try to cover the area's defined in Brian Maricks described Agile testing quadrants. We look at each area at the beginning of the story and defined what effort we are ...
Niels van Reijmersdal's user avatar
7 votes

Why did our process cause us to miss our release date?

Both Developers and Executives Broke the Agile Contract It was due for a release tomorrow but, as a result of a review by management, needs reworking. This will undoubtedly add a lot of time onto ...
Todd A. Jacobs's user avatar
  • 50.1k
6 votes
Accepted

Why did our process cause us to miss our release date?

I think the crux of your question may actually lie in questions you posed in a comment, rather than in the question itself: Do you find it acceptable that release dates are not met? The answer is.....
Sarov's user avatar
  • 14.8k
6 votes

Big 4 scrum consultant giving bad advice - correct or let fail?

There is nothing agile about the consultant's approach and certainly not use of the Scrum framework. That is waterfall with some modern software development terms being misused. Allowing an internal ...
Alan Larimer's user avatar
  • 1,624
6 votes

Why do Water-Scrum-Fall. What does it offer over Waterfall?

"Water-Scrum-Fall" is counter-productive Looks like "Water-Scrum-Fall" is a name coined by analyst firm Forrester Research to describe the reality of Agile found in many organizations. I would say ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

How can a professional services / custom solutions company adopt agile and be successful?

Using an Agile approach while contrained by traditional contracts and customer attitudes can be very challenging. However, there are many aspects of Agile that should still be of value: Transparency ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
5 votes
Accepted

An agile approach with a waterfall delivery and the QA impact

The sprint timebox offers you iterations, which are a convenient pace-setting mechanism. For your question, we want to look at the idea of adding incremental development into the process. In ...
Daniel's user avatar
  • 16.9k
5 votes

Last minute changes by the client

This is an unenviable position. I'm not sure there are any good/easy answers. Who is accountable in this scenario? Who approves the changes? Changes (last minute or not) have a financial impact on ...
MCW's user avatar
  • 8,728
5 votes

How can a Scrum team work with a Waterfall team

For what it's worth, APIs and protocols are an area you often do need things fixed. This has to be very deliberately and explicitly designed because if you need to change it later, every consumer will ...
Mr. Boy's user avatar
  • 159
4 votes

What are the steps for an agile coach when he starts with a new team?

I've spent a lot of time on this subject. I've been in a year-long collaboration with the online magazine AgileConnection.com on rolling out agile transformations. If you go to their website and ...
Joel Bancroft-Connors's user avatar
4 votes

Transition from waterfall to agile

I would recommend you guys hire an Agile Coach or Scrum Master, at least for a six months period. One of the four parts of the agile manifesto is Individuals and interactions over processes and tools ...
Muhammad's user avatar
  • 864
4 votes

Project management methodologies for multiple projects, small teams, diverse skills, partially remote team

I think Kanban may work best in your environment. And with some people being remote, you're almost forced to use an online Kanban board. I'll try to address the two issues you raise one by one. ...
RonaldB's user avatar
  • 141
4 votes
Accepted

How to prepare a schedule from Waterfall to Agile in software developement

Schedule the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and business goal milestones Identify the minimum viable product (MVP) that you can roll out to the end users (or a subset of end users) that makes business ...
Ashok Ramachandran's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How to leverage Agile development benefits in a fixed-cost project?

Scrum is an agile framework that is focused on adapting to change and delivering business value. It encourages feedback and looks to deliver what is needed, which is often not the same as what was ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
4 votes

software development through collaboration of waterfall and agile methods

It's impossible. All agile methodologies should be iterative. Otherwise, they will not correspond to the first and third principles of the manifesto: Our highest priority is to satisfy the ...
Sergey Kudryavtsev's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

Is there a difference between the terms phase and sprint

Phase The Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) provides a section for the term phase. Organizations performing projects will usually divide each project into several project phases to ...
Alan Larimer's user avatar
  • 1,624
4 votes

Last minute changes by the client

There are two parts to your question: Do the clients really need to make changes at very short notice If this is a real need, what do we have to do to respond to changes very quickly I would start ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
4 votes
Accepted

How can I prevent this software outsourcing project from failing?

Practically everything you've said is a cause for concern but the project should be salvageable. I suggest you concentrate on two things. Firstly, as Mark also suggested, it seems from your ...
nvogel's user avatar
  • 6,251
4 votes

How can a Scrum team work with a Waterfall team

I have been in this situation a couple of times and it is very challenging. Things that can help: Spend some time with the waterfall team explaining how you work. Even if you can't resolve the ...
Barnaby Golden's user avatar
4 votes

Project Management predictions vs Agile/Scrum flexibility

[...] how do you balance the business' desire for some type of estimation for overall effort, and the desire to remain iteratively agile. Educate them on why a big upfront estimation can be ...
Bogdan's user avatar
  • 15k
4 votes
Accepted

What methodology to choose for rewriting an existing software, incremental or waterfall?

The safest answer for any software development work is to start and continue incrementally (doesn't have to be Scrum though). There are some bigger questions implied by what you have said. It's ...
nvogel's user avatar
  • 6,251
4 votes

What methodology to choose for rewriting an existing software, incremental or waterfall?

You are building an entirely new application. The fact that you have access to an existing application which serves the same purposes using different technology will benefit you only to the extent ...
Mike Robinson's user avatar
3 votes

Velocity at different project phases

My suggestion is to look at a development life-cycle that I've seen used in some "Waterfall Release" companies using agile. The key to this is the word "Potentially" as in "potentially releasable ...
Joel Bancroft-Connors's user avatar

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