A comparison of software project architectures : agile, waterfall, spiral, and set-based

Engineers and managers of software projects have the daunting task of successfully delivering the right product at the right time for the right price. The path to achieving these lofty goals is commonly not a straightforward endeavor. Due to the dynamic nature of software development, varying organizational circumstances, and situational idiosyncrasies of each project this can be a very difficult and sensitive process. Ideally, software development methodologies bring order to the chaos of software development. An ill-fitting development strategy, however, can create unnecessary friction and further complicate the prospect of a successful product delivery. Researchers and private organizations alike spend substantial resources to understand the strengths and weaknesses of commonly used development practices - the validation of which is highly problematic due to conflicting variables. This research ventures to bring clarity to the question: "Which development methodology is right for a particular situation?" Treating the software development project life-cycle as a socio-technical system, it can be decomposed to the most fundamental elements. Using these elements as the architectural building blocks of a project, Agile, Waterfall, Set-Based, and Spiral are each compared at the molecular level. This thesis evaluates these comparisons and how subsequent research applies to today's software projects.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering and Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• West, Christian J. (Christian Joseph)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Bryan R Moser.

• Engineering and Management Program.
• Integrated Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/118510

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/118510