Agile processes have been used in software development, with many case studies indicating positive changes in productivity when these processes are used. Agile processes are beginning to be applied to work beyond software-centric systems. There does not yet exist a diverse set of studies on the effectiveness of Agile processes on hardware-intensive systems. The research in this article applies a modeling and simulation-based approach which uses the function–behavior–structure framework to evaluate the effectiveness of waterfall and Agile processes. The simulation was validated against case studies of software-centric design efforts. When applied to a space launch vehicle—a highly coupled, hardware-intensive system—the simulation shows that the benefits of Agile may not be as great as those seen with software-intensive systems.
Software Development Process Simulation: Multi Agent-Based Simulation versus System Dynamics
