Exploring Agile Methods

Agile development

As we build Wordz, we’re going to use an iterative approach, where we build the application as a series of features that our users can work with. This is known as agile development. It’s effective because it allows us to ship features to users earlier and on a regular schedule. As developers, it allows us to learn more about the problems we’re solving and how a good software design looks as we go. This lesson compares the benefits of agile development to waterfall approaches, then introduces an agile requirements gathering tool called user stories.

Waterfall development

The predecessor to agile development is called waterfall development. It’s called this because the project stages flow as a waterfall does, each one is fully completed before the next one begins. In a waterfall project, we split development into sequential stages:

• Collecting requirements

• Performing an analysis of requirements

• Creating a complete software design

• Writing all the code

• Testing the code

In theory, every stage is perfectly executed, everything works, and there are no problems.