Scrum-Fall Hybrid Scrum and Waterfall Methodology

Scrum-Fall is a hybrid system development methodology that combines both Scrum / Agile methodology and well popular waterfall methodology. When we focus on government IT projects we have to introduce a new method of development technique to successfully interact with the challenges that occur in the path.

Agile for the effective development?

Agile philosophy of IT software management is a trending and well-specified criteria that meets both the client and the organization’s needs and wants while developing a more client desired product. It focuses on meeting the client requirements the best while giving room for the developers to act on their best skills accordingly. It is a flexible philosophy which can be used accordingly to our projects.

Waterfall with innovations?

Considering waterfall as a method of system development there are some major drawbacks. For example, waterfall methodology has built upon various kinds of assumptions about the user requirements based on speculation, in-fact most of the time these assumptions are turn out to be wrong. The waterfall method is not good with projects which have a higher proportion of uncertainty where it is very difficult, if not impossible to predict the requirements. For example in the innovation projects waterfall method shows a lack of success because of these reasons.

Way of Agile works…

On the other hand Agile development methods such as Scrum and other popular frameworks, difficult to match both the government budgets and needs for the project. The Agile manifesto is built on four basic set of values which were vastly used in the software development industry. These values make a common platform for all the parties to work with. Within that framework, organizations consider the people who are interacting, working product, customer collaboration and respond to change, so that in the Agile philosophy we have to ignore the process, contract negotiation, comprehensive documentation, and follow-up plans. The issues started to occur in the government sector at that point. At the same time, they have to plan for the budgets and other government policies and regulations.

Effects for Agile from budgets.

Budgeting is an expensive and time-consuming activity that take away extra expenses and some of the underline expenditures in an organization, but since with the Agile developed methods and Scrum techniques people should be open to change the project procedure and maybe on some occasions we have to change the entire method to meet the user desires at its best level.

With all these miss matches government organizations step down from the complete Agile development methods. After all the analysis, people have to think about a proper solution for these issues and with taking new measures for the actions a hybrid methodology came to light. In this case, all the values that are needed to operate in a government organization have considered and used these values more efficiently.

Essential and effective values for the government.

Scaling Agile method to the government organizations and creating a hybrid platform which takes some relations from waterfall and Agile is not impossible. To ensure that this process is possible people should follow three basic principles.

First, the organization should have to identify the business problem and a clear vision of what is required from the project. Second, there could be different approaches from business leaders and technologists for the project and methods should ensure that ideas are integrated into one viewpoint. Finally, the final project model should be evolving through time accordingly to the perspectives of business and technology and should have a quick response to the necessary changes.

To ensure these three principles, a new set of values can be introduced for the government organizations.

We can use well-trained individuals for the tasks of the development process rather than hiring some low experienced people for a low cost and a vetted process and tools are much essential. This way it will reduce the amount of working hours and the efficiency rate will grow higher.

The next issue we are facing in the usual Agile method is changes at the final phases of the development and that affects the organization budget. Frequent delivery of working software and required documents will engage the developers and the users more frequently and that will make difference in the number of changes required in the final stages.

Dealing with users is more complicated when the acquisition contacts do not tend to change. By using a more flexible contract for the project will allow the users to move through the project as well as the developers to work through the system more effectively.

Finally, the plan of the project procedure should be friendly enough to change accordingly the user requirements at the final phases. That will make sure that the user satisfaction is at the top level at the same time all the developers will have the opportunity to make changes as per their desires.

Using these sets of values from the existing methodologies we can form a new and well responsive way of software development specially designed for the government organizations. This method is already used in the government in the United States and some of the organizations are the FBI case management system, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, California Child Welfare Services.

Impacts of these values

Using these values and adaptive Agile methodology will open up the new opportunity of working with the Agile working vendors for government organizations. For this to happen the mindset of the government agencies and vendors should change accordingly. They should evolve from contract-based to project-based, agencies run the projects not vendors, from contract management to performance monitoring. Adding up these changes will ensure the perfect match of the Agile philosophy in government organizations.

For the betterment of the government organizations and to improve the efficiency and the government projects we have to move into the Agile adaptive philosophy. That will make severe impacts on the growth in the ratios of analysis. While improving the development process this philosophy will support the more rigorous legalities of the project management in the government organizations.