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In software jargon, we term Agile variously as a movement or philosophy and its interpretation has also been subjective. In this section, we offer our interpretation, as practitioners of this method –

Agile outcomes can be predict

One may infer that Agile methods lead to a chaotic and unstructured way of Health care software development – while that may seem like an intuitive inference, in reality, a well implemented Agile methodology leads to more predictability and this is how- One of the banes of traditional methods is that it does not allow for change and delivers the product in an almost fully finished form. In a complex development effort, the time elapsed between freezing a design and delivering a product may be significant. Meanwhile, the business environment may have changed, new challenges may have cropped up, and users may have identified new needs. Now, when the product finally does arrive, they find, contrary to their expectations, the product has not turned out the way they now envisage.

This either leads to their “canning” the initiative or asking for large rework- certainly not the predicted outcome of the exercise.

Switch back to Agile now- how would the development team go about the process? They would elicit high-level and high priority needs of the user and market and estimate a date by which the user needs these features, to be most relevant and useful.

They would then do another exercise of prioritization of this list too and then commit to a delivery date. They would then decide on a suitable architecture and begin the development- along the way, they would involve the users to confirm the detailed assumptions and design. Once the developers build the prioritized set of features, the software is shared with the users

for feedback. In addition, users have flexibility to change their mind on features the development team is yet to incorporate.

Adaptive Predictive

This process may be followed a few times over, before the final product shapes up. It is not hard to infer that this method leads to a more predictable outcome, even if it does not allow for as predictable a process. And therein lies the difference- while traditional methods highlight the process so much that it reigns supreme,                             agile product life cycle management make the process an enabler rather than an imposition. They mandate the process should allow for changes and variations to result in a more predictable outcome- the needed software on time.