Software quality and agile methods

TLDR

Agile methods may produce software faster, but their ability to meet quality requirements remains uncertain. The study compares waterfall and agile processes to demonstrate how agile methods achieve quality under time pressure and unstable requirements, and analyzes agile QA. The authors present a detailed waterfall model of quality support processes and illustrate the quality practices integrated into agile methods. The comparison shows that agile methods can ensure quality even while developing software faster and handling unstable requirements.

Abstract

Agile methods may produce software faster but we also need to know how they meet our quality requirements. In this paper we compare the waterfall model with agile processes to show how agile methods achieve software quality under time pressure and in an unstable requirements environment, i.e. we analyze agile software quality assurance. We present a detailed waterfall model showing its software quality support processes. We then show the quality practices that agile methods have integrated into their processes. This allows us to answer the question "can agile methods ensure quality even though they develop software faster and can handle unstable requirements?".