Challenges in Agile Software Development

Abstract

Software Engineering is an emerging field in Computer Science, since there is a need of systematic development of software product. The most popular method, engineers have been following was Waterfall or traditional approach. But it became obsolete to fulfill the customers’ need more quickly and efficiently. Agile Software development (ASD) is the software development method where design, development and testing are interleaved to evolve the solution with the effort of self organizing and motivating team. ASD is one of the most widely used Software development method today. Agile methodology has many sub methods like Extreme programming (XP), Scrum, Adaptive Software Development, Lean etc. All the Agile approaches significantly increase the software development performance, customer satisfaction. Due to the inability of the traditional software development processes such as waterfall, spiral model to satisfy the customer, organizations slowly stepped towards adapting the agile methods. Agile Software methods are more informal and it provides the team members the freedom to work in their own way leading to more productivity in the work.  Although there are several advantages, it also has some challenges. This paper gives an overview of the challenges in ASD along with possible solutions.