Planned Methodologies vs. Agile Methodologies under the Pressure of Dynamic Market

In the software development, the most challenging task is todevelop projects under the pressure of dynamic market, where TimeTo Market (TTM) and requirements instability could fail thedevelopment process. Therefore project management should choosethe development methodology that can control the problemsassociated with the dynamic market. Agile team argue that plannedmethodologies are heavy to cope with the rapid changes of thedynamic market, because the planned methodologies stronglyemphasize on the planning process , by incorporating a lot of detaileddesign techniques like UML. On the other hand agile team claim thatagile is the marvelous approach that has solutions for all problemsrelated to the dynamic market, because agile achieves higherflexibility, and better to satisfy actual customer requirements. Agileachieves this, by developing and delivering the software product in anincremental fashion. Agile methodologies try to avoid anydevelopment overheads, and minimize unnecessary effort. This paperpresents a comparative study that compares between plannedmethodologies -which have coupling relationship with UML analysisand design techniques – and the agile methodologies. The comparisoncompares between the two approaches in many respects, such asanalysis, design, human resources, cost of the changes of therequirements and communication. The comparison shows how thelightness of the agile methodologies gives better responses to thedifferent problems related to the dynamic market. Also the studyshows that agile minimizes the cost of the changes of requirementsduring the development process.