Is medical software development changing? A quick review of Waterfall today vs. Agile Software Development tomorrow. One of the biggest advantages of Agile is the integration of testing with development throughout the development process. Testing teams are full participants in requirements, architectural and design reviews, and collaborate with human factors engineers to create acceptance criteria for user stories and implement test cases.

1. Intro to Agile in an FDA Environment
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2. This is a short story of TODAY meeting TOMORROW…
TODAY its WATERFALL
TOMORROW its AGILE
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3. WATERFALL… this process can work when all is understood
and well defined, and there are no changes, hidden
complexities, undiscovered requirements, or defects.
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4. Once you start adding change into the mix, you start
running into waterfall development’s cost of change curve.
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5. Requirements, design, development and testing are all
part of the iterative process, as well as risk management
and customer feedback.
Instead of treating each of these as fixed phases, Agile
explicitly incorporates feedback so that they can evolve
and change
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6. “The Agile process is the universal remedy for software
development project failure. Software applications developed
through the agile process have three times the success rate of
the traditional waterfall method and a much lower percentage
of time and cost overruns.” *
* Agile Development Methods for Space Operations, Jay Trimble and Chris Webster, NASA Ames Research Center.
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7. In an Agile process, documentation is updated on a per
iteration or per increment basis, with some documentation
updated automatically through application of the Agile process
and development practices such as test driven development.
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8. One of the biggest advantages of Agile is the integration of testing
with development throughout the development process. Testing
teams are full participants in requirements, architectural and
design reviews, and collaborate with human factors engineers to
create acceptance criteria for user stories and implement test
cases.
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9. Conclusion…
By testing stories as soon as they are
implemented, testing teams uncover defects and
discrepancies early in the process, when they are easiest
to fix and have the least impact on other parts of the
system. This process also has the benefit of parallelizing
independent verification and validation with
development, thereby compressing the schedule.
Want to learn more?
Download our FREE eBOOK  http://pathfindersoftware.com/agile-in-anfda-regulated-environment/
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10. Build your next great product
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