Today
Waterfall and Agile
Through the lens of VALUE
Oh... and stick around to the end for details of how to get your free
"Waterfall vs Agile Cheat Sheet"
This is Development That Pays
I'm Gary Straughan
And I was preparing for this episode,
(When I say "preparing", I of course mean "while I was googling")
I came across this set of four graphs.
The dotted line here is for a Waterfall project
The yellow line is for an Agile project.
Nicely done.
I also came across this set of four graphs
And this set
I'm not sure where this "quadrumvirate" originated
- If you happen to know please let me know so that I can credit it properly -
Wherever it came from, it's really caught on.
It would appear that the internet is in broad agreement that these are the four graphs
that describe the whole Waterfall vs Agile 'thing'
So they must be right?
Right?
Well, I have bones to pick with at least two of them.
Today we'll take a look at one of those
the graph of Value
The first bone of contention is the term
"Business Value"
I don't really like that term.
At least not in this context
The term I prefer is CUSTOMER Value.
The waterfall projects I've been involved with
delivered ZERO customer value
until the day of the big launch
Think of building a bridge
At a certain point...
Half of the bridge is there...
3/4 of the bridge...
And still no value has been delivered to the customer
It's only when the bridge is finished
Does the 'customer' receive some value
Moving on to the Agile curve
I'm happier.
But not completely happy.
I know we want to deliver high value early,
But do we really get such a flying start?
Or is the first sprint all about getting things set up?
I'd prefer to see more of an s-curve
To indicate a slow start
before we get into our stride
then levelling off in the later stages.
When I was googling to find every possible version of "the four graphs"
I came across another graph.
By a guy called Henrik Kniberg.
You may have come across him before.
We've mentioned him a few here on
Development That Pays
His image of how to do - and not to do - a Minimum Viable Product
went viral
and - like the four graphs - was much....
"reproduced".
Anyway, here's Henrik's take on the value graph.
A usual, Henrik gets everything right
Here's the nice s-curve for the agile project
And the waterfall project delivers little value until the end
Henrik gets something else right...
Something that you can't see because I've "doctored" this diagram slightly,
I'll show you the real version in a moment.
Something that most of the others get wrong.
Wrong
Possibly right
Maybe [right]
If you've been delivering value...
you've been learning.
... and if you've been learning,
you've been learning how
to provide more value.
Here's Henrik's un-doctored version.
With the additional VALUE highlighted here
As Henrik puts it:
"Faster learning means higher value."
Two quick things before we finish
Firstly, What do you think about this?
Has Henrik created the ultimate waterfall vs agile value graph?
Please let me know in the comments below
If you're interested in Waterfall and Agile and the differences between them
I call it the Waterfall vs Agile Cheat Sheet
And it's your to download today
You'll find a link in the description
Click the link
Follow the instructions
And it's all yours
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I look forward to seeing you next time.