Overview
What is Software Development Approaches?
Building software is like building a Lego castle. We can do it in many ways, each with its steps and rules. Let’s learn about these methods:
Waterfall
The Waterfall method is like building your castle one step at a time, following the instructions in a Lego box. We lay the foundation, then the walls, then the towers, and lastly, the decorations. Each step must be perfect before moving to the next.
Agile
The Agile method is like building a mini-castle first, asking friends for ideas to improve it, and then building it bigger and better. We keep doing this until we have a big, beautiful castle all our friends love.
DevOps
In the DevOps method, imagine having a magic machine that builds and improves our Lego castle even faster. The machine builds a small part, checks if it’s good, adds it to the castle if yes, or lets us fix it.
RAD (Rapid Application Development)
With RAD, imagine having magic Lego blocks that can change into any shape. Instead of planning a lot, you start building quickly and adjusting the magic blocks as you go along.
Spiral Model
The Spiral Model is like building your castle in a spiral. You start at the center with a small castle, then add bigger circles of walls and towers, improving each time.
Iterative and Incremental Development
With the Iterative and Incremental methods, we build our castle wall or room by wall. We improve the castle at each step based on what we learned from the previous steps.
V-Model
In the V-Model, imagine planning each part of your castle twice. First, you plan it in your head (Design) and then build it with Legos (Implementation). You check if the part you built matches what you planned (Testing).
If you want to know more, here are some books you can read when you’re a bit older or ask your grown-up friends to read for you:
- “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” by Jeff Sutherland - It’s a great book to understand Agile and Scrum, a type of Agile.
- “The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win” by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford - This is a fun story that can help you understand what DevOps is.
- “Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Approach” by Roger S. Pressman and Bruce Maxim - This book covers almost all software development approaches, including Waterfall, Agile, RAD, Spiral, and others.