Question

What are the challenges from the project manager and the development team perspectives in successfully following an iterative system development life?

Answer 1

In an Iterative system, the full requirements are not required at the beginning. A small part of the software is designed and developed and then we improve on it incrementally.

For a project manager, this mean a lot more work than waterfall system. The project manager has to be involved in each incremental development cycle. He need to be in constant communication with the stakeholders to keep gathering requirements for the future increments and also with the development team to make sure the requirements are clear. He also needs to make sure that the risk and skill analysis are done properly because they play a major role in the success of an iteratively developed software.

For the development team,this might cause issues since each successive phase is rigid with no overlaps.There might be issues that turn up later in the system architecture since the complete requirements are known at the beginning. The project might require more resources with expert technical skills to handle the quick deliverable. Since every iteration should deliver a working deliverable, the team might be under constant pressure to meet deadlines. It is very difficult to predict the end date of the complete project in such cases.