scrum vs waterfall

Scrum & Waterfall Methodology: Which is right for your project development?

The competition is growing at a rapid pace in the tech world, and we keep coming across the invention of new software development methodologies. However, this way it often gets challenging for startup companies to choose the methodology that would best suit their project requirements. In the case of complex mobile app development, it is vital to understand the project needs before you take any decision to select the best methodology for the development process.

Besides, there are other things to be considered such as budget, time limitation, update requirement, scopes of the project, and expertise of professionals. These factors play a critical role when it comes to making this big decision. So, here let’s discuss the Scrum and Waterfall technology that help new Startups in selecting the right methodology suiting their project needs well.
Now before we begin, it is essential to understand the fundamentals of both scrum and waterfall, to find about the effectiveness as well as challenges of both scrum and waterfall. Let’s analyze how each methodology affects the various aspects of mobile application development.

scrum vs waterfall

Scrum Methodology

It’s a prominent framework and control process helps in reducing the project complexity and enhances focus on developing products that attain the precise needs of businesses. This simple and efficient framework is useful for successful team collaboration as it comes to working on complex projects.
Here in this framework, iterations of fixed length known as sprints that take one or two weeks by the team to deliver software module on a regular interval and parted features require approaching using an agile methodology. It follows a set of tasks, meetings along with responsibilities that can’t be amended.
The four major ceremonies of Scrum that offer structure to all sprints (project steps) comprise of sprint planning, daily standup, sprint demo, and presentation. During the period of each of the sprint, the team utilizes visual object to demonstrate progress and gather gradual feedback.

The Key Roles of Scrum are:

The Product Owner: The person representing the company.
The Scrum Master: The person defining three ceremonies, comprising of Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum and Sprint Retrospection. This certain person is referred to as a team facilitator instead of a team leader or a project manager.
The Scrum Team: This team looks after the development of the project.

Key Benefits of Scrum:

Scrum involves precise roles and ceremonies and offers various benefits:

Each Team member is responsible

The Scrum team doesn’t have a project leader, and it is a collective responsibility of each team member involved to complete the work in each sprint. The mutual understanding plays a pivotal role, and it is necessary to assist each other in work and complete the task together. This leads to better team collaboration and gives authorization to each team member to work independently and efficiently.

Better Project Visibility

It is the responsibility of the Scrum team to organize daily meetings to ensure the team knows what each member is doing. This reduces confusion and unnecessary arguments. This also makes it easy to find any issues in the initial stage so that the team can work out things before they become intricate.

Amendment is simple

It turns easier to deal with necessary amendments when you use the small parts of sprints and regular feedback. When the need arises to add any new feature in the sprint, it can be added easily by the owner in the succeeding sprint at the time of the meeting of backlog refinement.

Read Also: Looking to Build an MVP? Know how much does it cost!

Reduces Time to Market

With the incremental delivery system, it gets easier to reduce the time to market the product which in turn boosts revenue. Thorough testing is done at each sprint before moving to the next sprint as that makes it foolproof. The testing takes place right through the process as that allows team members to change the project scope at any time.

Better quality and lesser expenses

As the time to market the product is less, it becomes highly cost-efficient, and throughout testing at each sprint, it enhances the product quality and makes it seamless.

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Waterfall Methodology

Also known as a linear-sequential life cycle model, the waterfall model is very easy to understand and use. Here, you just need to complete each phase fully before proceeding to the next one.
The projects which are small in size and have precise requirements best suit this software development model. After completion of each phase, they are reviewed so as to ensure that everything is perfect and there is no need to abandon or not to continue further.
Here, the testing process is conducted once the entire project development process is over. This model best suits the project which has clear needs, precisely known and predetermined. The most crucial aspect is that there are no uncertain requirements, stable product definition and known technology. When the project is small and sufficient resources are available with required proficiency, it reaps great outcomes.

Sequential Phases:

The phases of this model comprise of Conception, Initiation, Analysis, System Design, Construction, Testing, Implementation, and maintenance.

Benefits of Waterfall Methodology:

• Easy to use and manage, this software development model follows a sequential pattern that is similar for all projects. The project team doesn’t need any training or experience to work with this model as they can work on it directly.
• Phases must be completed one by one without any overlapping. As the model is rigid, hence each phase has precise deliverables and a review process.
• Documentation is required in every phase as it results in easily understanding the logic for the coding and testing process.
• This model works best for small size projects with the well-defined and clear requirement. This way it gets easy to deliver the project timely.

Conclusion:

When you have to decide the best methodology that suits your startup between the Scrum and Waterfall, consider various factors such as the scope, size, amendment and many other criteria along with the budget of the project.
In the case of the waterfall model, you cannot go back and make any change, as it gets highly expensive for big-sized and complex projects. However, if you have a project small in size with clear requirements, then you can go for the waterfall model.
With the Scrum model, it can be amended when required as there are no limitations. But due to this, it becomes uncertain to define project deadlines. Also, team members require experience and expertise with the dedication to attain the given task.

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Arun Goyal

Managing Director @ Octal Info Solution, Arun Goyal is a tech-enthusiast and visionary entrepreneur. He loves to talk about technology, and expresses his views about the trends in tech-world through this blog.