Plan-driven and Agile Development

Covering how agile and plan-driven approaches differ in their treatment of design/implementation, how iteration works in each, whether plan-driven can support incremental delivery, the documentation spike, and the ten factors for choosing between the two approaches

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QUESTION OF

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Views #: 222

Questions #: 10

Time: 10 minutes

Pass Score: 80.0%

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Agile vs Plan-driven — Central Activities

1 pts

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The diagram below contrasts how plan-based and agile approaches handle specification and design.

How do agile approaches view design and implementation relative to other software process activities?

Design and implementation are separated strictly from requirements, just as in plan-driven approaches

Design and implementation are the central activities — other activities such as requirements elicitation and testing are incorporated into design and implementation rather than treated as separate stages

Design and implementation are peripheral activities that are handled after all requirements and analysis are complete

Design and implementation are replaced entirely by automated code generation

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Plan-driven — How Iteration Works

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In a plan-driven approach, how does iteration occur and how is information communicated between stages?

Iteration is driven entirely by customer feedback on deployed increments

Iteration occurs across activities — requirements and design are developed together

Iteration occurs within activities, with formal documents used to communicate between stages of the process

There is no iteration — each stage is completed once and never revisited

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Agile — How Iteration Works

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In an agile approach, how does iteration differ from a plan-driven approach?

Iteration occurs within activities, just as in plan-driven development

Iteration occurs across activities — requirements and design are developed together rather than separately

There is no iteration — each feature is built once

Iteration only occurs during the testing phase

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Can Plan-driven Support Incremental Delivery?

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True or False: A plan-driven software process cannot support incremental development and delivery.

True

False

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Documentation 'Spike' in Agile

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Complete the sentence about the agile documentation spike.

In an agile development team, a documentation (1) is an increment where, instead of producing a new version of a system, the team produces (2).

Please drag and drop the selected option in the right place or type it instead

spike

system documentation

trend

garbage

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Ten Factors for Choosing Plan-driven vs Agile

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Factors

×A very detailed specification and design is needed before moving to implementation

×An incremental delivery strategy with rapid customer feedback is realistic

×The system requires a lot of analysis before implementation (e.g. real-time with complex timing)

×The system can be developed by a small co-located team who can communicate informally

Favours plan-driven

Favours agile

Ten questions can guide the choice between plan-driven and agile approaches. Classify each factor as favouring plan-driven or agile.

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External Regulation — Which Approach?

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If a system must be approved by an external regulator such as the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and is critical to aircraft operation, which development approach is likely required and why?

Either — the choice of approach has no bearing on regulatory approval

Agile — because test-first development satisfies all regulatory requirements automatically

Plan-driven — because the regulator will probably require detailed documentation as part of the system safety case

Agile — because regulators always prefer faster delivery

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Distributed Teams — Which Approach?

1 pts

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If part of the development is being outsourced or the development team is distributed, which approach is likely more appropriate and why?

Either — team distribution has no impact on process choice

Agile — because informal communication works well across distributed teams

Agile — because daily stand-up meetings can be held online

Plan-driven — because distributed or outsourced teams need design documents to communicate across teams, and planning in advance for these documents is necessary

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System Lifetime and Documentation

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How does the expected system lifetime affect the choice between plan-driven and agile approaches?

Long-lifetime systems favour agile because they will evolve through many increments

Long-lifetime systems may require more design documentation to communicate the original intentions of the system to a support team — though supporters of agile methods rightly argue that documentation is frequently not kept up to date

Short-lifetime systems always require more documentation than long-lifetime systems

System lifetime has no bearing on process choice

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The Ultimate Question — Plan-driven vs Agile

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What is the ultimate concern that should drive software development, regardless of whether a project is labelled plan-driven or agile?

Minimising the number of lines of code written

Whether the buyers of the software have an executable software system that meets their needs and does useful things for the individual user or the organisation

Ensuring the development team follows a recognised methodology approved by an industry standards body

Producing comprehensive documentation that satisfies all regulatory requirements

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Agile vs Plan-driven — Central Activities

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Plan-driven — How Iteration Works

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Agile — How Iteration Works

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Can Plan-driven Support Incremental Delivery?

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Documentation 'Spike' in Agile

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Ten Factors for Choosing Plan-driven vs Agile

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External Regulation — Which Approach?

Correct Answer

Explanation

Distributed Teams — Which Approach?

Correct Answer

Explanation

System Lifetime and Documentation

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The Ultimate Question — Plan-driven vs Agile

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