Agile Methods — Problems & Limitations

Covering the practical difficulties of applying agile principles, the contract problem, time-based contracts and their risks, agile and software maintenance (maintainability, team continuity, customer involvement), and the balanced view of agile methods' shortcomings

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Views #: 210

Questions #: 10

Time: 10 minutes

Pass Score: 80.0%

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Large Organisations — Why Agile Is Difficult

1 pts

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Applying agile methods to large organisations is described as difficult. What is identified as one key reason?

Agile methods require co-located teams and large organisations are always globally distributed

Large organisations lack the computing infrastructure needed to run agile tools

Large organisations always develop safety-critical systems that cannot use agile methods

Large organisations have often spent years building a culture of defined and followed processes, and moving to informal processes defined by development teams is difficult

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The Contract Problem in Agile

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Why is writing contracts for agile development difficult when a customer uses an outside organisation for system development?

Agile methods require customers to write the code themselves, making contracts unnecessary

Legal regulations prohibit time-based contracts in most countries

Agile development always exceeds budget so no fixed-price contract is possible

The software requirements document is usually part of the development contract, but incremental specification is inherent in agile methods — making it difficult to write a contract based on a fixed set of requirements

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Time-Based Contracts — The Risk

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Complete the sentence about time-based agile contracts.

Agile methods rely on contracts where the customer pays for the (1) required for system development rather than a specific set of requirements. If problems arise, there may be difficult disputes over who is to (2) and who should pay for the extra time and resources required to resolve the problems.

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Agile and Software Maintenance — Maintainability

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Agile enthusiasts argue that minimising formal documentation does not make systems harder to maintain. What is their key argument?

Customers are responsible for updating documentation during maintenance

Formal documentation is often not kept up to date and does not accurately reflect the code — the key to maintainable software is high-quality, readable code, which agile practices emphasise

Automated tools always generate accurate documentation from agile code

Formal documentation is always kept up to date and accurately reflects the program code

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The Requirements Document Problem for Maintenance

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Despite agile advocates' arguments about code readability, what document is identified as the key document for system maintenance — and why is its absence a problem for agile-developed systems?

The system requirements document — because without it, it is difficult to assess the impact of proposed system changes, and many agile methods do not create a coherent requirements document

The design document — because it contains all architectural decisions made during development

The test plan — because it documents what tests were run and what passed

The project plan — because it tells engineers who developed which part of the system

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Team Continuity — Agile Maintenance Risk

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What problem arises for maintenance when an agile development team is broken up after delivery?

Automated tests stop running when the original team leaves

Agile methods rely on team members understanding aspects of the system without consulting documentation — if the team is broken up, this implicit knowledge is lost and new team members find it difficult to build the same understanding

The customer loses the right to request changes once the original team disperses

The codebase becomes incompatible with modern tools

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Customer Involvement — Why It's Hard During Maintenance

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Why is maintaining customer involvement in the agile process particularly difficult after software delivery?

Customers lose interest in software once it is delivered and refuse all further contact

Maintenance always involves only bug fixes which require no customer input

During maintenance, changes are not continuous so customers are less likely to justify full-time involvement of a representative — customer representatives may lose interest in the system over time

Legal agreements prevent customers from being involved after acceptance testing

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Classify Agile Limitations

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Statements

×Incremental specification makes it difficult to write fixed-requirement contracts

×Implicit team knowledge is lost when the development team is broken up after delivery

×Individual team members may not have suitable personalities for the intense involvement of agile methods

×Agile methods do not typically create a coherent requirements document, making it hard to assess the impact of proposed changes

Contracts

Maintenance

Team/People

Classify each statement as a limitation of agile methods related to contracts, maintenance, or team/people factors.

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A Balanced View of Agile Methods

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True or False: It is argued that supporters of agile methods have been completely right in their promotion of agile approaches, with no significant shortcomings.

False

True

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Agile Methods and Critical Systems

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Why do agile methods require significant modification before they can be routinely used for critical systems engineering?

Because critical systems always have very small teams that cannot adopt agile practices

Because the need for security, safety, and dependability analysis in critical systems requires more rigorous approaches than standard agile methods provide

Because critical systems are always developed by government agencies that prohibit agile methods

Because agile methods cannot produce any form of documentation required by safety standards

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Professional Undergraduate

Large Organisations — Why Agile Is Difficult

Correct Answer

Explanation

The Contract Problem in Agile

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Explanation

Time-Based Contracts — The Risk

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Agile and Software Maintenance — Maintainability

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Explanation

The Requirements Document Problem for Maintenance

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Team Continuity — Agile Maintenance Risk

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Customer Involvement — Why It's Hard During Maintenance

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Explanation

Classify Agile Limitations

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A Balanced View of Agile Methods

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Agile Methods and Critical Systems

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