I have worked at multiple firms with a mix of Waterfall and Agile methodologies. In my most recent roles, I have focused on helping large financial organizations adopt SAFe Agile practices to enhance collaboration and drive transformation.
| Company | Team/Project | SDLC Style | Pros & Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America | Commercial Fraud Scrum Team | Started as Kanban, transitioned to SAFe Scrum |
Pros: Visual workflow helped early organization; transition to Scrum improved structure, sprint planning, and velocity tracking. Cons: Initial lack of structure in Kanban required strong discipline; adapting to SAFe added ceremony overhead. |
| TIAA | MOD (Investment Performance) | Agile (loosely followed SAFe) |
Pros: Flexible and adaptable to team needs; allowed for iterative delivery. Cons: Lack of strict framework sometimes led to unclear priorities or uneven sprint cadences. |
| TIAA | PlanFocus | SAFe Agile |
Pros: Strong coordination across teams; PI planning improved long-term visibility. Cons: Overhead from SAFe ceremonies and tooling; slower responsiveness to mid-sprint changes. |
| Wells Fargo | Commercial Collateral Management Systems | Waterfall transitioning to Agile |
Pros: Predictable planning phases; early documentation clarity. Cons: Rigid, slow to adapt; hard to change course once development started. |
| Bloomberg | Order Processing Systems and Salesforce Integration Business Systems | Waterfall |
Pros: Clear structure and well-defined requirements up front. Cons: Inflexible to changing business needs; delayed feedback loop. |
Waterfall is a traditional linear model where each phase must be completed before moving to the next. Best suited when requirements are well understood upfront.
Agile promotes iterative development with a focus on collaboration, feedback, and responsiveness to change.
SAFe extends Agile across large enterprises, aligning teams and stakeholders under a common framework.
Kanban is a visual and flow-based method focused on continuous delivery and limiting work in progress.
| Ceremony | Purpose | Participants |
|---|---|---|
| Sprint Planning | Define sprint goals and select user stories from the backlog to commit for the upcoming sprint. | Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team |
| Daily Standup | Quick check-in for team members to share progress, blockers, and daily goals. | Scrum Team |
| Sprint Review | Demonstrate completed work to stakeholders and gather feedback for future iterations. | Scrum Team, Stakeholders, Product Owner |
| Sprint Retrospective | Reflect on the sprint and identify what went well, what didn’t, and opportunities for improvement. | Scrum Team |
| Backlog Refinement | Review and update the product backlog to ensure stories are well defined and prioritized. | Product Owner, Scrum Master, Development Team |
| PI Planning (SAFe) | Align multiple teams on shared goals, define objectives, and plan deliverables for the Program Increment. | All Agile Teams, RTE, Product Managers, Architects |
Agile is a mindset and set of principles for software development focused on flexibility, collaboration, and customer value. It encourages iterative progress, continuous feedback, and adaptive planning.
Scrum is a framework within Agile that structures development into fixed-length iterations called sprints. It defines clear roles, ceremonies, and artifacts to promote transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
Kanban is a visual workflow management method focused on continuous delivery without overloading team capacity. Work moves through stages at a sustainable pace with clear visibility.
The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is designed to scale Agile practices across large enterprises. It coordinates multiple teams, aligning them with shared business goals through synchronized cadences and shared planning.
| Term | Definition | Framework |
|---|---|---|
| User Story | A short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the user or customer. | Agile, Scrum |
| Product Backlog | Prioritized list of work for the development team, maintained by the Product Owner. | Agile, Scrum |
| Definition of Ready (DoR) | Agreed-upon criteria that a user story must meet before it can be accepted into a sprint. | Agile, Scrum |
| Definition of Done (DoD) | Agreed-upon criteria that a product increment must meet to be considered complete. | Agile, Scrum |
| Work In Progress (WIP) Limit | A constraint that restricts the number of work items in any given stage of the workflow. | Kanban |
| PI Planning | Large-scale planning event to align all teams on a common mission and objectives. | SAFe |
| ART (Agile Release Train) | A long-lived team of agile teams that incrementally develops, delivers, and operates one or more solutions. | SAFe |
| Scrum of Scrums | A scaled coordination meeting where representatives from multiple Scrum teams discuss progress and dependencies. | Scrum, SAFe |
| Retrospective | A regular meeting where the team reflects on recent work and identifies improvements. | Agile, Scrum |
| Increment | The sum of all completed work items during a sprint that meets the Definition of Done. | Scrum |
| Continuous Planning | An ongoing process of revisiting and adjusting plans as new information emerges, ensuring flexibility and alignment with business goals. | Agile, SAFe |