Software Process Shootout: Agile vs Traditional

I’ve been in conversations we're developers often discuss and argue over "the ultimate" process in software development. It's possible to standardize on one process, but most probably not likely. From my experiences and working with development teams, waterfall methods are useful where there are clear, stable requirements. Sadly enough, this isn't the case for most waterfall projects. When an average project's scope may vary by 1% per month or more, the longer the waterfall, the more upstream work (that is, waste) must be done. However, certain organizations, or certain business processes within them, have requirements that don't change on a regular basis, as long as the duration of the project is reasonable. Agile methods, on the other hand,  are very useful where the business has little-to-no understanding of its requirements (normal in new products or new business processes), or where the business process changes rapidly by nature. Agile methods also will be applicable to business process management and service-oriented development efforts, but today they are mostly used for net new software development.

So to help foster a healthy debate over software methodologies Microsoft Canada is sponsoring a panel discussion hosted by the Toronto Agile User Group on Thursday June 25th from 6.30pm to 8.30pm at Microsoft’s Mississauga office.

Event Details:     https://torontoagile.org/TAUG-invite-3.html

Event Registration:   https://torontoagile.org/Registration.html

This should be an interesting and lively event where the distinguished group of panellists will discuss, present and debate their views of various factors that influence project success with the ultimate decision given to the audience to vote. The goal of this panel discussion is not to prove that one approach is better than other but to understand each other's perspectives and principles with the ultimate goal of exploiting synergies in order to dramatically improve project performance.

Also checkout the reference on Visual Studio Team System process templates and tools on the MSDN site.

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