An Analysis of In-house and Offshore-outsourced Software Development Projects Utilizing Waterfall versus Agile Methodologies: A Simulation Study
Abstract
Software is an integral part of each and every business model, whether it is banking, manufacturing, insurance, hospitality, aviation, education, healthcare, social networking or any other domain. The design and development of any software system can require significant investments in capital, time, domain expertise, tools and infrastructure. Despite improvements in the software industry over the past decades, the percentage of software failures has also increased, which led to loss of capital, time and information. Software development projects continue to fail due to the use of ineffective development and management processes, commonly found in waterfall-like development, that inject faults into various stages of the software development life cycle. Repeated use of a development process that does not produce software that performs as intended can impose serious problems on a software development project. Hence, it is essential that organizations employ a consistent and adaptable process that allows for the creation and delivery of quality software that satisfies customer’s expectations. Such a process offers a framework that could help to plan new projects, avoid repeating the mistakes of past projects, and improve on successful elements. Traditional, sequential development methodologies such as waterfall differ from later adaptive and iterative methods like agile. Many of the practices of traditional methods are not effective in software development projects created today. However, because of their failure to accept this reality, many organizations continue to use software development processes that do not produce desired results. Still, today popular belief is that offshore development is the ‘fix’ for in-house or onshore project problems. This dissertation analyzes in-house and offshore- outsourced software projects utilizing waterfall versus agile development to identify the real determinants of the problems. It concludes with an agile simulation of the problems to show the difference had the projects been done in an agile manner. The study will provide useful insights that can be adopted to institute an effective software development process that produces successful, high quality software that can be used.
Subject Area
Information Technology|Computer science
Recommended Citation
Maxwell-Sinclair, Novelle, "An Analysis of In-house and Offshore-outsourced Software Development Projects Utilizing Waterfall versus Agile Methodologies: A Simulation Study" (2016). ETD Collection for Pace University. AAI10097928.
https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/dissertations/AAI10097928
Remote User: Click Here to Login (must have Pace University remote login ID and password. Once logged in, click on the View More link above)