Software development success depends on three major factors: clear project documentation, a highly-skilled development team and smart project management.
In this article, we are going to introduce you to some of the up-to-date popular project development methodologies so that you can choose that one method that will benefit your project.
What Are The Most Popular Software Development Methodologies?
Agile Development Methods
The main focus of Agile methodology is the product itself. It’s suitable for those types of software development that allow multiple iterations. A piece by piece development helps the customer to understand whether the whole project is moving in the right direction by having control over each project iteration.
Agile software development models have a draft, rather than a detailed development instruction. The team is prepared to keep up with the constantly changing conditions and ready to react to customers’ and users’ feedback and adjust the functionality according to it.
The most popular Agile methodologies are known as Scrum and Kanban.
- Scrum. Scrum methodology breaks the workflow into equal sprints. Sprints include tasks and can last a week or a month, depending on the project complexity. After one sprint is done, the team sums up the results and starts a new sprint.
- Kanban. Kanban project management’s goal is to effectively distribute the work between the different specialists within the team. The process is divided into the stages of specific tasks such as “Planned”, “Developed”, “Tested”, “Done”, etc. A big chunk of Kanban methodology is visualization known as Kanban board. It helps to track current tracks and to foresee the problems along the development process.
Waterfall Software Development Methodologies
In waterfall types of software development, the development process ‘flows’ step by step. The project is split into phases that go one by one. First, the team conducts the project analysis, then creates a design, after goes the development and it finishes with testing, integration and project support. Each phase should be completed before the next stage begins.
The Waterfall model is one of the classic project development methodologies. The whole process is linear and rigid. Though, each phase has a clear goal in the end which makes this development model very thorough.
DevOps Methodology
DevOps methodology suits best when you are looking to quickly develop the software. DevOps software development models are rather practices that automate the collaboration between software development and other IT teams. This method’s focus is to improve the cooperation between project teams. Often developers and managers have a different understanding of the development process, and DevOps project management methodology to make sure all involved parties are on the same page.
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
Rapid Application Development or RAD suits projects that have clear business objectives and need to be delivered in a short amount of time. This model is an optimized linear sequential model from the Waterfall method. Rapid development is achieved by assigning teams to different project components.
Lean Development
In Lean development methods, the developers mark project elements as main and secondary. Lean methodology is aimed to do what matters for the project at the moment and avoid wasting time on tasks that don’t add value. The main focus is to determine the value of the service offered to the client.
The main principles of Lean are:
- Do not waste time on tasks that don’t add value;
- Focus on the quality and perform continuous testing;
- Always get the feedback and make sure you know what the client wants;
- Optimize your work as much as you can.
So, How To Choose The Best Methodology?
There are plenty of software development methodologies you can pick from. We can’t name any good or bad types of software development methods as each one of them offers its unique values.
Though, here are the questions that you can ask yourself when choosing from multiple software development methodologies:
- Is this method suitable for the size of our team and their skills?
- Is this method compatible with our tech stack?
- Will this method help to fulfill a client’s goals?
- Does this method benefit the development of software of this size and complexity?
Top software development companies don’t stick to one development method and choose it based on their needs. We recommend doing the same and picking a software development method based on your unique situation.
Hope this article was helpful. If you have more questions regarding this or any other software development topic, feel free to contact us.