As we all know, Agile is a software development methodology.

We have also learned about the values and principles which were mentioned in the agile manifesto by the founders of agile. In our initial discussions, we also skirted upon the differences between agile and the traditional waterfall models.

In this tutorial, we will get to know the advantages and disadvantages of the agile methodology.

We will see what is scrum? and how is it different from agile? Then we will understand the various agile methodologies that are being used by different organizations and how can we implement agile using them.

You will also be able to appreciate the difference and also the advantages/disadvantages of these methodologies.

Advantages of Agile Methodology

Given below are the various advantages of Agile Methodology:

• The customers continuously get a look and feel of the project progress at the end of each iteration/sprint.

• Each sprint provides the customer with working software that meets their expectations as per the definition of done provided by them.

• The development teams are quite responsive to the changing requirements and can accommodate changes even in the advanced stages of development.

• There is constant two-way communication which keeps the customers involved, thus all stakeholders – business and technical – have clear visibility on the project’s progress.

• The design of the product is efficient and fulfills the business requirements.

Disadvantages of Agile Methodology

Though there are several advantages of Agile methodology, there are certain disadvantages involved in it too.

They are:

#1) Comprehensive documentation is not preferred which can lead to agile teams incorrectly interpreting this as agile doesn’t require documentation. So the rigor gets lost on documentation. This should be avoided by continuously asking yourself if this is sufficient information to proceed or not.

#2) Sometimes, at the beginning of the projects, the requirements are not crystal clear. The teams might proceed and find that the customers’ vision got realigned and in such situations, the teams need to incorporate many changes and it is difficult to gauge the end result as well.