Vol 4 No.1

Traditional versus Agile: The Tragile Framework for Information Systems Development

ABSTRACT Traditional systems development methodologies sometimes fall short in today’s business environments because they lack the flexibility required for most of today’s information systems projects. In response to this problem, so called “Agile” software development methodologies have been proposed and put to use. Although agile development appeared as a way to overcome the limitations of the traditional development methodologies, they faced some challenges when applied in specific problem domains. The concept of agility, which emphasizes human role in software development processes, is revolutionizing the systems analysis and design field as well as the software engineering field. However, the question that begs an answer is whether traditional systems development methodologies have no place in today’s fastpaced developments.

This paper demonstrates the extent to which agile software development methodologies can be combined with traditional approaches to information systems development, showing the advantages of combining agile and traditional approaches in the same project. The paper then proposes the “Tragile” framework, which is a hybrid framework that combines both traditional and agile development practices to serve the field of information systems development. The paper then presents a summary of a case study application to show how the Tragile framework had affected the development process in the selected project.

Authors
Galal H. Galal-Edeen
  • Organization : Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computers & Information, Cairo University (Egypt)
  • Email : galal@acm.org
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Mohammed S. Seyam
  • Organization : Information Systems Department. Mansoura University (Egypt)
  • Email : ms_seyam@mans.edu.eg
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