Agility

that’s how ‘Alexander The Great’ (Agile) kicked Darius’s (Waterfall) butt. And this victory against such great odds can teach us some useful lessons about how to improve the delivery of our software development projects.

1. Avoid committing too early — especially when you don’t have all the information you need. You’ll make better decisions if you wait till the last possible moment.

2. Collecting requirements upfront — and assuming they will never change over the duration of the software development project — can cost you dearly in terms of delayed delivery times, additional development costs and software that has little or no value to your customer.

3. It’s better to develop software incrementally. Because with each iteration we learn more. And the more you learn, the better you get.

4. Empowered team members make better technical decisions, are more productive and develop higher quality software.

5. Face to face communications are much more effective than documentation at eliminating ambiguity and ensuring everyone is working towards the same objectives.

http://agiletv.co.uk/199/the-day-that-agile-kicked-waterfalls-butt/