Q:

Compare and contrast the suitability of agile and Waterfall models of managing a project in the context of building an e Commerce Website

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‏Imagine that you have been assigned as a project manager to manage your company e-Commerce Website where 

customers can browse the company products, place orders, and interact with the company customer service

 representatives. Your project must be completed in three (3) months and you have about twelve (12) people in

 the team. There are three (3) offshore developers in Johor Bahru and two QA testers in Penang. The rest of

 the project team and the product owner are in Kuala Lumpur. 

 

‏Compare and contrast the suitability of agile and Waterfall models of managing a project in the context of building an e Commerce Website for this project.

Hint: You have to explain the differences in the project execution if you use waterfall models and if 

you are using agile methods to develop this project. Look at the allocated marks to know if your answer is sufficient or not

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evaluate the pros and cons in agile and Waterfall project management in terms of planning and the execution of this e-commerce website project, also the collaboration among project team members. 

For each model, give TWO(2) points for pros and TWO(2) points for cons 

Note : You have to explain in details each point.

Decide whether you would use an "Agile" or "Waterfall" model to manage this project Support your rationale

All Answers

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As we know, the agile models is used usually for small unclear projects, and with small team members, so I am sure that we have to use the agile models in developing this project. And the following is a comparison between agile and waterfall model and when to use each one:

Waterfall models used when:

·        Big teams.

·        Clear requirements

·        Project duration is big (may be several years).

While Agile model used when:

·        Small teams (our teams members number is considered as a small team (12 members only) ).

·        Unclear requirements (the requirements of the project is not 100% clear, because we didn’t mention whether the website will be B2C, B2C, or C2C, and didn’t mention the detailed requirements, so in this case I am sure that we will make some changes in requirements when starting working on the project phases).

·        Project duration is small (several months, or less)

 

So we will choose agile model.

 

Differences in project execution:

In case we use waterfall model:

First of all, the requirement should be clear and complete from the early beginning,

Second, we have to extend the working hours of our team members, to be able to finish the project in the desired deadline.

 

In case we use agile model:

In this case we will try to not spend a lot of time on requirements, analysis and design phases, to give a chance for the team to have more time in implementation and testing phases, because the requirements may change a lot and we may make a lot of changes in implementation upon it.

 

 

 

evaluate the pros and cons in agile and Waterfall project management in terms of planning and the execution

of this e-commerce website project, also the collaboration among project team members.

For each model, give TWO(2) points for pros and TWO(2) points for cons

 

Note : You have to explain in details each point.

 

In case we use waterfall model in this project, we will have the following pros and cons:

Pros:

ü  A full documentation of the project will be written, because we will have to create a lot of detailed diagrams in analysis and design phases, and this will be very helpful for us in future when trying to create a new version of the website or make some enhancements on it.

Cons:

·        Duration of project will not be enough and we will not finish on time, and we have to extend working hours, however we will not finish on time.

·        Makes changes difficult:

Waterfall is based entirely on following a set of steps that keep teams always moving forward. The methodology, in its traditional form, leaves almost no room for unexpected changes or revisions. If our team has loyally followed the steps of Waterfall nearly to the end of the project but then faces an unplanned roadblock that necessitates a change in scope or goals, pivoting won’t be easy. We will have put a considerable amount of work into a project under very specific, rigid assumptions. A sudden change to the parameters of the project could render much of work, which can throw off the entire timeline.

 

In case we use agile model in this project, we will have the following pros and cons:

Pros:

ü  We can finish on time: because some phases will be abbreviated or even deleted (analysis and design).

ü  Changes in requirements can be done without a lot of damages: when a changes in requirements happened we have to change the early stage phases upon it, and any way we will not do a lot of analysis and design diagrams and documentation, so for that reason it will not cost us a lot of time and effort to edit the upon the new requirements.

Cons:

·        Limited documentation: Documentation of the project will be very weak (no enough analysis and design diagrams to look at when want to make upgrades on website after several months or years).

A documentation of project may be necessary when trying to create a new version of the website in the future, because we may create a new team member to do the new version.

·        No finite end:

The fact that Agile requires minimal planning at the beginning makes it easy to get sidetracked delivering new, unexpected functionality. Additionally, it means that projects have no finite end, as there is never a clear vision of what the “final product” looks like.

 

 

Decide whether you would use an "Agile" or "Waterfall model to manage this project Support your rationale

 

As we know, the agile models is used usually for small unclear projects, and with small team members, so I am sure that we have to use the agile models in developing this project.

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