Agile, Waterfall, or Hybrid: An IF4IT Framework for Choosing Delivery Methodology

This framework recommends and informs; it does not govern the structural choices that belong to the enterprise. The framework’s posture on when the methodology decision is made follows from that principle.

Most commonly, the delivery methodology is determined once, at the onset of a Product or Service’s definition, and it holds for that Product or Service’s entire lifespan. The methodology is determined at definition because the four indicators are dominated by the intrinsic nature of the Product or Service, and that nature is largely fixed when the enterprise decides what the Product or Service is. Whether a web portal’s work is decomposable, incrementally deliverable, deliverable in consistent cycles, and low in consequence of failure is a property of what a web portal fundamentally is. The same is true, in the opposite direction, of an integrated circuit. The character is set at definition, and the improvements that follow inherit it.

Because the methodology is a property of the Product or Service established at definition, the routine improvements made over the lifespan inherit that methodology and are never individually reassessed. No enterprise re-derives a delivery methodology before each new feature of a web portal, and none should. The methodology question is most commonly asked again only when a genuinely new Product or Service comes into being.

That said, the enterprise is always free to reassess the methodology to meet changing needs. The framework describes the common and sound pattern — decide once at definition, inherit thereafter — but it does not forbid reassessment. An enterprise whose circumstances, capabilities, or constraints have genuinely changed may revisit a past decision, and the framework supports that revisiting.

Likewise, when an enterprise undertakes work whose intrinsic nature differs substantially from the existing Product or Service — for example, a ground-up rebuild or a severe re-platforming — the methodology that suits that work may differ from the methodology the Product or Service has been using. Whether the enterprise treats that work as a new Product or Service or as a new version of the existing one is entirely the enterprise’s decision, and either way the enterprise is free to assess the methodology fit for that work. What counts as a Product or Service, what counts as a new generation versus a new version, and when to revisit a past methodology decision are all enterprise prerogatives. The framework’s role is to help the enterprise assess methodology fit given those choices — not to make those choices for the enterprise.