Waterfall, agile and hybrid delivery methodologies
How to pick waterfall, Scrum, Kanban or a per-workstream mix from what is known when work starts, what the Agile Manifesto and lean principles change about planning, documentation and quality, and how definition of ready and definition of done govern a team's work.
Given the project risk and customer requirements, explain how to assess the benefits and risks of the different development methodologies and recommend the appropriate governance strategies based on the customer maturity.
~8 min read · 9 practice questions ·
What the exam expects
- Assess a project with the standard questions (what is known, clarity of objectives, requirements and solution, team and stakeholder experience, complexity) and recommend waterfall, agile or a mix per workstream.
- Choose between Scrum, Kanban and Scrumban from how plannable and interruption-driven the work is.
- Apply the four Agile Manifesto values and tell "being agile" from "doing agile".
- Separate a definition of ready (when work may start) from a definition of done (when work is finished).
- Recommend lean practices, including quality owned by the people who build the change, and scale governance to the customer's maturity.
Key terms: waterfall (everything planned up front, each step finished before the next); agile (deliverables built incrementally from the start); Scrum (defined roles, meetings and deliverables in short sprints); Kanban (continuous flow limited by work-in-progress limits); definition of done (everything required before work counts as done); definition of ready (what a work item needs before anyone starts it).
Key facts
- Detail
- Waterfall for simple or complicated predictable work; agile for complex work based on feedback, risk and innovation
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- Each team defines its own from lean principles and continuous improvement
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- At least 25% of work changing mid-sprint suggests Kanban
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- Four "X over Y" values; the right-hand items still have value
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- People focus, continuous learning, frequent value and delight
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- Everything required before work is truly done
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- What a work item needs before anyone starts it
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- Hybrid engineers cover coding and testing; no separate quality engineer title
- Why do some teams combine Scrum and Kanban as Scrumban?
- When does urgent incoming work fail to justify a switch from Scrum to Kanban?
- Which four examples of waste does Salesforce's Eliminate Waste principle list?
- When is Scrum the better choice than Kanban?
The questions are free to read. Answers with their sources and self-grading are included with the pack.
Keep reading with the Platform Development Lifecycle and Deployment Architect pack
- Core concepts
- Exam traps
- Worked scenario
The pack includes:
- All 26 lessons of the Platform Development Lifecycle and Deployment Architect guide, with reading progress
- Interactive decision walks and step-by-step sequence steppers
- Inline practice questions and one-click topic practice (9 questions for this lesson)
- An official source cited for every claim
- An AI tutor that answers from the guide
- Unlimited timed practice exams