Agile development

Traditional software development progresses in a linear manner, starting with requirements specification and progressing through testing and acceptance testing. It is heavily managed through techniques such as PRINCE2.But it has many problems, including an inability to adapt and a lack of customer involvement. Recently, many companies have adopted an agile approach in which small amounts of software are delivered rapidly and regularly. Agile approaches resulted from a dissatisfaction by developers about the monolithic and heavy management which is part of traditional software development. An early approach, Extreme programming has evolved into the current most used approach of SCRUM. Along the way a philosophy has developed which is summarised in the agile manifesto.

Question: What are the problems with traditional development which led to an agile approach? Outline the principles of the agile approach referring to and introducing extreme programming and the agile manifesto.

Describe SCRUM and how it works. Provide a short case study of an agile project and review the key problems associated with the agile approach.