Importance of Moving from Waterfall Methodology to Agile Methodology in Indian Construction Industry

Abstract

Waterfall methodology as name suggests is a linear progression or sequential development process which flows like a waterfall, i.e. one after the other from beginning till end of the project. Here, the project is divided into phases (like Design Phase, Planning Phase, Execution Phase, and so on) and theoretically one phases started after completion of the previous phase. The project success is measured on achieving the phases within time and budget by attaining the desired quality. Apart from this, there are various KPIs (like Earned Value Management (EVM) or Project Milestones and so on) that are also considered while monitoring the project success. Indian construction projects more or less follow waterfall methodology which is considered to be rigid & traditional methodology to follow and generally leads to cost and time overruns on almost all the projects. As per the data published in Aug’21 in Business standard, overall cost overrun of as many as 479 infrastructure projects is more than INR 4.4 trillion where each project is worth INR 150 crore or more. Moreover, it was observed that around 541 projects are delayed. While agile methodology uses continuous iteration method which involves constant collaboration of all the stakeholders in every stage of the project. Thus, implementing agile would make construction projects more flexible where all the changes can be implemented within the allotted timeframes with very less or no re-work involved. The study will focus on how to use 12 principles & 04 core values of Agile manifesto in construction projects which will yield better results and successful completion of both real estate and infrastructure projects.