Agile promotes an incremental approach, where only a
small part of the overall requirements are dealt with at a time. Each of these small
requirements are analyzed, designed, coded, integrated, and validated before leaving
the workflow cycle.
The delivery end goal is similar for Agile and for
traditional development styles: to complete development for the full set of
requirements. However, the way to get there is different. In Agile it is
essential to break the large set of requirements into small workable chunks.
The sequence below shows how, in Agile, the small parts of completed work
(darker small square) form the full set of requirements (lighter big square).
In essence, a large, complex requirement is sequenced
into a series of small, simple requirements. As a result, the simpler
requirements are completed incrementally, and made available for the end user.
In this case, the end user (or whoever is validating the software) provides
feedback based on the working software increment. This feedback is essential
for two reasons. (1) Corrections and changes can be made in an early stage of
the project, instead of only showing up at the end; therefore reducing the
project risk. (2) The complexity of the analysis work is reduced. The team and
the end user have early access to the working software increments. So, the
ongoing analysis work is based on existing completed (or partially completed)
work, instead of making all of the decisions for the software up front. And this
pattern of working on small increments holds true for all the work including: analysis,
design, coding, testing, integrating and deploying.
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