Adaptive Software Development: Everything You Need to Know

Quick Summary: Adaptive Software Development is a type of agile methodology that was devised to overcome the challenges of the waterfall model. This methodology is resilient to abrupt changes in software requirements because it emphasizes a development approach that is based on continuous learning and adaptation. It’s flexible enough to accommodate changes and develop the right solutions. In this blog, you can learn everything about this methodology and how it benefits the software industry.

Software development can be a mess without a proper strategy and methodology. As a matter of fact, many organizations have gone through their worst nightmares in the past due to software errors costing millions of dollars.

Various development methods have been devised over time and used by developers to build and deliver quality software products in less time and on budget. However, the constantly changing business requirements force developers to adopt new methodologies to tackle various challenges in software development.

The industry needed a flexible and adaptive process to quickly adjust to the changes in requirements and expectations of stakeholders. This thought culminated with the evolution of Adaptive Software Development (ASD) methodology, a precursor to the agile software development approach. It is a flexible and iterative development approach that supersedes the Waterfall model.

Unlike the Waterfall model where the process to develop applications is seen as a series of tasks, the adaptive development approach focuses on continuous learning and adaptation. You may wonder, how does the software industry benefit from this development methodology? You will get the answer to every question in this blog, stay tuned.

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What is Adaptive Software Development?

Let’s start with the first thing first by understanding the definition of ASD and what does ASD stand for. ASD or Adaptive Software Development is one of the widely adopted software development methodologies. This development approach is based on the concept of learning and adapting to changes.

ASD offers an efficient and nimble approach to solving complex business problems. It is one of the earliest forms of agile methodologies and works on similar principles. The speculation-collaboration-learning cycle makes Adaptive Software Development very close to the agile software development methodology.

A Short History of ASD (Adaptive Software Development)

For a long time, Waterfall has been the most popular methodology for developing software until the advent of Rapid Application Development (RAD) methodology in the 1970s - 1980s. The RAD approach focused on adaptative development. Adaptive Software Development (ASD) came out of the work of a duo of project managers, Jim Highsmith and Sam Bayer on RAD.

ASD was inspired by the rising demand for a development approach that encourages collaboration within an organization and with clients. With this methodology, not only can teams in an organization collaborate effectively, but clients can also be a part of the development process.

The idea of ASD was innovative and offered a better alternative to the Waterfall methodology. This was the foundation of the agile software development life cycle which is the cornerstone for modern software development processes.

Today, Agile is one of the most popular SDLCs used by developers to create solutions in a swift and flexible manner. As per Statista, 37% of all developers worldwide were using the Agile approach for developing digital solutions.

Stages of Adaptive Software Development Life Cycle

The ASD process is composed of three phases that are speculation, collaboration, and learning. These phases of the adaptive life cycle provide an iterative approach to developing software solutions.

Speculation

The “Speculation” phase in ASD coincides with the planning phase in other development methodologies. However, planning is rather a deterministic term that indicates certainty in results. This is not the case with ASD methodology as it provisions the scope of uncertainty and improvement. This openness to improvement makes adaptive software development focus on results rather than tasks.

Since it is almost impossible to predict results, chances are high of making mistakes during the planning phase. ASD acknowledges the volatile nature of software projects and takes every stakeholder into the process to cope with uncertainties.

Teams will usually do the following in the speculation cycle:

• Prepare a mission statement considering all the present scenarios.
• Build a consensus on their end goals; create and share mission artifacts.
• Provision for ways to change and adapt to what they learn through the project life cycle.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the phase where development takes place. The collaboration stage brings teams with diverse knowledge and experiences together to build enterprise applications. Teams try to balance their efforts by working on the predictive parts and adjusting to changes under this phase of adaptive software development methodology.

The teams focus on completing predictable tasks while preparing for the changes that could be caused by requirements, technology, stakeholders, etc.

Learning

Teams perform short iterations of the design, build, and test cycles. These iterations help the teams to accumulate knowledge through a loop of making small mistakes and correcting them. The pattern of mistakes and corrections results in an experience that eventually leads to mastery.

This phase can be compared with the review or retrospect phase in other methodologies. So, the review of the product on the basis of technical aspects and customer perspective is done to evaluate it. Besides this, the team’s performance is also evaluated to find out any scope for improvement.

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Characteristics of Adaptive Development Process

In this fast-changing world, the duration of software development and delivery means a lot. Hence, you need a software development process that is resilient to changing customer demands.

Mission Focused

One of the key attributes of an adaptive software development framework is its focus on the objectives or results rather than completing a particular task. Indeed, ASD insists on meeting the goals of the project, and tasks are repeated until those goals are achieved. Teams take all decisions and make changes after evaluating if they will help meet the goals.

Iterative

The adaptive life cycle is iterative because it involves a repeated set of activities or processes. The repetition of the activities or processes helps teams to improve and refine a software product incrementally.

Timeboxed

Timeboxing is a way of allocating time to activity in agile development. It is one of the key values and principles of the agile manifesto. Since ASD is an antecedent to agile methodology, it was the first to have those attributes.

In agile, short time-boxed periods (1-4 weeks) are known as sprints in which development teams are required to finish specific tasks. The same is with timeboxed characteristics of ASD methodology.

Feature Based

According to this characteristic, ASD focuses on providing specific functionalities or features that meet the user or customer requirements. It starts with the features that are more important for the users or customers and builds other features incrementally. Hence, the software product is developed in sprints and each feature is added in increments. With this approach, the software is developed with the right features and functionalities that satisfy all users and customers.

Risk Driven

Software projects fail primarily because teams overlook the potential risks that arise out of uncertainty. Identifying and addressing the risks is one of the core characteristics of the adaptive software development (ASD) methodology.

Teams work on identifying the risks that can be deemed to create any issues like the technicalities, gathering requirements, changing customer expectations, and more. The ASD process mitigates the risks in software development and provides a quick response to resolving issues.

Change Tolerant

The adaptive development approach is change-tolerant to cope with changing requirements, project goals, and user needs. It has the ability to easily adapt to changes at any stage because of iterative, time-boxed, and feature-based characteristics.

Whenever there is any change in requirements or user expectations, the teams are able to incorporate them easily with the next iteration of the development process. The team can integrate the changes in the solution and send the client for review to make sure the process is on the right path.

Benefits of Adaptive Software Development in Software Engineering

Just like any other SDLC, the ASD process has its own strengths and weaknesses. There are many reasons why ASD can be a suitable approach for developing and releasing applications quickly and reliably. However, this process is also subject to some limitations. Let’s see the strengths of ASD.

• Adaptive Software Development provides a development approach that focuses on the end users. So, it will help to build intuitive software solutions because of more attention toward user satisfaction.
• ASD cycles ensure meeting all the requirements and expectations of different stakeholders results in faster software development and release. In the waterfall process, there can be a scope of issues that force you back to the drawing board resulting in a delay in project delivery.
• As the client becomes an integral part of the development process under ASD methodology, this collaborative environment is something premium software development services strive to uphold. It helps provide complete transparency between their teams and clients throughout each phase from inception through completion correspondingly indeed!

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Limitations of Adaptive Software Development Process

Adaptive development offers benefits to development teams that earlier software development models couldn’t do due to their rigid nature. It enabled the teams to function with freedom and focus on software quality rather than task-bound processes. However, it is not a foolproof plan and has its own limitations as follows.

• The level of user involvement it demands is not always feasible. Hence, the process can be tedious because of unwarranted delays.
• The project’s cost can also go high with the testing integrated at every stage of the development process.
• The cycle of rapid iteration and continuous feedback might result in scope creep.

Comparing Adaptive Software Development with Other Methodologies

Adaptive Software Development (ASD) vs RAD

It’s obvious that both ASD and Rapid Application Development (RAD) share some similarities because the former was devised out of the latter. Short iterations, fast development speed, and focus on delivering a workable solution in the least possible time are some of the common attributes of ASD and RAD. Further, the feedback loop is an integral part of each methodology. However, in RAD, a prototype is used for user feedback and the learnings are implemented in the real solution.

Adaptive Software Development vs Extreme Programming

Now let’s compare ASD with the most common agile methodology, which is Extreme Programming. Both ASD and Extreme Programming (XP) focus on the quality of software and responding to changing customer requirements. XP is a derivation of agile software development SDLC where short development cycles offer quick software releases. Besides this, XP, just like ASD, also advocates collaborating with clients. However, in XP client collaboration is more rigid by making the client a member of the team.

Adaptive Software Development vs FDD

ASD and Feature-Driven Development (FDD) have several things in common and they are sometimes interchangeable. Just like the ASD approach, FDD is also an iterative and incremental process. It is another type of agile SDLC that focuses on features. Under the FDD methodology, the development process revolves around the features, but ASD is component-based.

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Adaptive Software Development: An Approach to Agile DevelopmentToday, software development is not just about solving business problems but also about keeping up with the trends and changes in the industry. Teams are required to quickly adapt to changes in customer requirements and work with the top enterprise software development trends to build quality solutions. They can choose an agile development approach that honors the changes by adapting and evolving the process accordingly.This is possible with adaptive programming or adaptive SDLC that helps to improve and build upon the previous learnings. Since there are different stakeholders like users, businesses, development teams, etc., that could impact the quality and delivery of a software solution, an adaptive approach is inevitable for the development process. Organizations have realized the benefits of agile transformation and are adopting a flexible methodology for software development.Are you a business planning to develop an enterprise application with an agile approach? Radixweb is an indispensable partner for you. We have experienced and knowledgeable software developers proficient in managing projects with an agile methodology. You can hire software developers for developing custom business applications or any complex solution based on your requirements. It takes a few steps to select and hire the developers for your project. Contact us for holding a quick discussion and choosing the team.