ABSTRACT
Globally, many organizations have had struggles with troubled information technology software development projects. As a result, some of these organizations have made attempts to experiment with newer approaches such as agile methods with the expectation that value could be delivered early alongside superior quality features. The hope was that this change in approach would certainly result in more satisfied stakeholders. The author believes that agility has fulfilled its promise. Many projects have obtained successful outcomes with agile implementations. On the other hand, there are some organizations that are very cautious about forging ahead with agile. This guarded approach is based upon the acknowledgment that the agile framework is not appropriate for every project. This chapter identifies those types of projects that are suitable for agile and those that are not. We also provide simple techniques that can be used to make formal assessments when contemplating the move to agile methods.
How does an organization know when to select agile rather than the waterfall model for software development? The answer is not always simple. According to Ambadapudi Sridhara Murthy (2013), there are alternatives to waterfall and agile. Often a combination of both methods will yield the desired models as outlined below:
