What is the Best Software Development Methodology?

We live in a time when software development became a major driving force in numerous industries out there. Think about all the apps out there that have popped up in the last decade. Every large company has its own, and it is the main way they offer their services to the clients and they endorse their products and services.

Naturally, building software is not a walk in the park. It is a process filled with numerous endeavours and challenges that need to be overcome. Those who have worked on these know just how hard this can be sometimes. There are moments when you don’t know what the cause of the problem is. So, you need to push hard until you find a solution.

Before you can conduct any sort of work out there, you should know what methodology you should use for your project. Once again, we are not talking about a decision that’s easy to make. You need to conduct thorough research before you can find the right solution.

Today, we will talk about the best software development methodologies worth your attention.

Agile

We want to start with agile, a method that consists of minimising any sort of risk. One of the most common ones among programmers, you will find bugs, overruns, and costs. Another one that might pop up from time to time is the change in requirements, which is not something we would describe as an easy thing to overcome.

With agile, the team of developers divides the whole project into numerous smaller projects, and each of them is developed step by step. Some projects can be described as more straightforward, they can even be chronological. Some of the forms of this approach are extreme programming and crystal.

The main benefit of this approach is that it allows the software to be published in iterations. Why is this beneficial? Well, the software developers have a chance to take a look at all the elements of the project closely and determine when is the right time for it to be released. All these small projects need to be approved by the team, and there’s always some client feedback involved in it.

Waterfall

Even though some would say that waterfall is an outdated software development method, we beg to differ. We can still that it is in use even today. Some high-quality projects have it as one of the main components. For those who don’t know about it, it is a simple and linear approach.

All the elements of the project are categorised in cascading and sequential procedures. Since it doesn’t require too much of an effort to understand, then nobody should be surprised why so many beginners choose to start with this when they begin their journey. Still, that doesn’t mean it is less effective than any other method out there.

DevOps

Many make the mistake of believing that DevOps is solely a development method and nothing more than that. But when you take a closer look at it, it becomes obvious that it is also a string of practices that give valid points for the culture of organising any sort of project, mainly software development.

Also, it is good to say that DevOps means that all the parts of the process are interconnected. What does this mean? Well, some app or website you are working on is inevitably going to be in constant need of updates, for various reasons. So, the mindset adopted by those to utilise this approach is to act like they are developing new software whenever they work on updates.

By doing so, developers make the procedure significantly more effective. For instance, the time needed for improving the problems that appear from time to time is reduced significantly. Also, the reliability of the product remains absolutely the same throughout the process.

Scrum

If we are to be strict, we would say that scrum is just a form to implement the agile approach. It is a framework that offers you a chance to utilise it. However, it needs to be said that this framework has started to grow enormously, and as a result, many consider it to be a standalone method in this day and age.

There are three main aspects of this approach, product owner, scrum master, and development team. From the names of these aspects, you can see that we are talking about the roles that divide the responsibility of all parties involved in the projects. So, everyone will know what they should do and there’s no intervening in other departments.

The main strength of scrum is that it divides the project into a couple of different, let’s say, sprints. It means that the team needs to work on a certain scope of work for a certain amount of time. Naturally, these periods tend to differ from case to case, but the average time for these is between two and four weeks.

Lean

The final methodology we want to discuss is lean software development. Those who created this method were inspired by the ones used by Toyota back in the day. It consists of a procedure that leaves minimal space for waste of resources, which is a crucial thing for efficient software development.

At the same time, the team of developers is constantly looking toward implementing the features that can make the app itself both more useful to the clients and more efficient. The ultimate goal is for their product to work without any sort of setbacks and flaws, which is not easy to achieve most of the time.

With the implementation of lean, you can expect that the software will be optimised by cutting down all the setbacks and waste of resources. As you can presume, doing so requires investing countless hours before all these problems can be recognised and fixed. So, only the most committed teams can fulfil it properly.

The Bottom Line

It doesn’t matter whether you are a beginner who wants to make the first step as a programmer, or a veteran who needs to decide on an approach for a future project, this list of ours will be of enormous help. Here, you can find all the most relevant software development methodologies out there.