uilding on fresh ideas is now a lot simpler for expanding businesses because of the variety of well-known and well-described methodologies at their disposal. We refer to these methodologies as software development lifecycle models. These models enhance your software project’s workflow and results. The various software development models seek to organize work teams so that they can implement software development processes as effectively as possible.
The process or framework selected for software development needs to be detailed and should function best with your team for an efficient plan and relevant results. Statistically, 25% of software initiatives fail for various reasons, including an inexperienced developer, a time limit, low quality, minimal user interaction, and vague requirements. Therefore, the development team should consider factors like the experience of the developer, user requirements, time, and complexity of the project while selecting software development models for your project.
All software development models have unique formats, strategies, and methods. So, how can the optimal methodology be chosen for particular projects? Should businesses use more than one methodology depending on the kind of project? This article is intended to answer these questions. Business analysis services from experienced developers can help you to pick the most suitable model for you. In case you simply want to gain specific knowledge about software development models, this article is for you. This article contains a quick rundown of the ten software development models and the advantages, complexity, cost, and delivery time for each model. Our expert team at SumatoSoft has also compiled a comparison table for each model used in project development to see which would work best for you.
How to Choose the Best Software Development Model: Choice Criteria
Choice Criteria, Brief overview:
- Cost
- Development speed
- Delivery frequency
- A possible number of defects in the model
- Project complexity
- The popularity of the model
All software development models are divided into different categories. They are distinguished based on whether they use linear or iterative workflow organization methods and the interactions they create between the development team and the client. For example, the waterfall model and V-model take a sequential flow because they are simple to use, implement and maintain. Software development models like spiral, iterative, and increment are less rigid and offer flexibility when software requirements evolve. Whereas software development models like scrum and Kanban actively involve clients at various stages of the software development life cycle. This concept is depicted in the chart below:
According to a report by digital.ai, about 86% of software development departments of various organizations have adopted agile methods and principles. Digital.ai is a US-based leading technology company committed to assisting 5000 businesses globally in achieving their objectives for digital transformation. Their enhanced platform enables large, complex organizations to succeed in the current digital market by fusing agile planning with software delivery and end-to-end intelligence.
Agile methodology’s most significant advantage is that mistakes, flaws, and inconsistencies are detected early in the development phase. However, every methodology has unique formats, strategies, and methods. Each of them has a variety of minuses in addition to strengths. So when your team embarks on a journey to shortlist software development models for a particular project, ensure that your team carefully puts fundamental project requirements on the table. All software development models fail to help you if your aim is to build a complex project without bugs at a low cost.
To help you with this, we have set some criteria elements to fill against each software development model. The criteria items include cost, development speed, delivery frequency of the model, allowed number of defects, project complexity, and the model’s popularity. A brief description and values of each criteria item are given below, which can assist you in finding the model that matches your desired values most.
Cost
Cost estimation for software development models is intrinsically tricky because every project has different criteria and end goals. The overall complexity of a project is the most important aspect determining the final cost of the software development model. The sample values for the cost section in this article are described below.
Sample values:
- Low ($<10.000)
- Moderate ($<150.000)
- High ($>150.000)
Development Speed
According to GoodFirm’s statistical analysis, 61.60% of the development companies set an average time of 4-6 months for software development. Development speed is the time needed to market a thought process or an idea. The sample values for the delivery speed of software development models in this article are mentioned below.
Sample values:
- Low (12 months)
- Medium (6 months)
- Quick (3 months)
