Advantages & Disadvantages of Agile

Advantages of Agile model:

• Customer satisfaction by rapid, continuous delivery of useful software.
• People and interactions are emphasized rather than process and tools. Customers, developers and testers constantly interact with each other.
• Working software is delivered frequently (each sprint end).
• Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication.
• Close, daily cooperation between management people and developers.
• Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design.
• Regular adaptation to changing circumstances.
• Even late changes in requirements are welcomed


Disadvantages of Agile model:
• In case of some software deliverable, especially the large ones, it is difficult to assess the effort required at the starting of the software development life cycle.
• There is lack of emphasis on necessary meetings and documentation.
• The project can easily get taken off track if the customer representative is not clear what final outcome that they want.

Agile testing consists more of a method in which to handle the testing process and does not test a certain aspect of the project itself.  It is more of a concept.

The concept of “the team being responsible for quality” or “the whole team concept” and not just the testing team is a key value of agile methods.  Agile methods need the development team writing unit tests and/or following Test First Design (TDD) practices.  This is not to be confused as a test activity as in fact it is a mechanism to help with designing the code . The goal is to get as much feedback on code and build quality as early as possible.

The desire for information earlier in the development phases is to monitor what the current code and build quality of the latest checked code are. This requirement leads to the use of continuous build and integration practices which provide feedback every time code is checked into the code repository and the system is built, usually on a daily basis.