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Furthermore, the South African industry requiring degree'd software engineers almost all still follow a strictly waterfall process, being mostly the defence ind

by buyx 13y ago

Furthermore, the South African industry requiring degree'd software engineers almost all still follow a strictly waterfall process, being mostly the defence industry following DO-178 processes Interesting, I know one programmer who worked in the SA defence industry, and was later retrenched, but that's just anecdotal. Do you have a source for this assertion? Other firms not in defence also mostly have fixed features / cost contracts they are developing for, which fits the waterfall model of development. I have to disagree with this, but since the "waterfall"-versus-agile debate has been done to death before, I won't rehash it here. University coursework always lags industry best practices, so this isn't really surprising. This is an honours degree from a brick-and-mortar university, so the curriculum lag argument is a bit weak. I understand that an undergraduate degree being taught to hundreds of students may take some time to be updated, but at post-graduate level, I would expect a bit less dogmatism. Come to think of it, during my undergraduate studies, about 10 years ago we learned about agile methodologies and iterative development.

kabouseng 13y ago
No I have no source, only my own experiences. I have a couple of friends / colleagues / class mates working in various sectors of the industry. Saab, Denel, Armscor represents my comments on the DO-178 work. Saab actually implements scrum, but from my understanding it is more like scrum bolted on to waterfall :D. I have also been in a couple of interviews lately, specifically at ATE / Paragon, C-Track, Grintek and RapidM. All basically have the same Waterfall methodology. Now I was careful to state that it is the case with businesses requiring degreed engineers. Web development shops in SA probably follows a more agile approach, the only one I know of, Entelect for instance is fully agile as far as I can tell, but I don't really know anybody there. It could also be that only me and my network is experiencing this, it is all anecdotal, but then again, I doubt there is some kind of study that can give you a better picture. I am based in Centurion in case you were wondering. Also its not about if Waterfall / Agile is best, its because the contracts are generally setup with fixed deliverables, which suits waterfall best. Lastly even with honours degrees the curriculum is set, and the professors aren't too keen on changing it too often.

by buyx 13y ago

kabouseng 13y ago

No I have no source, only my own experiences. I have a couple of friends / colleagues / class mates working in various sectors of the industry. Saab, Denel, Armscor represents my comments on the DO-178 work. Saab actually implements scrum, but from my understanding it is more like scrum bolted on to waterfall :D. I have also been in a couple of interviews lately, specifically at ATE / Paragon, C-Track, Grintek and RapidM. All basically have the same Waterfall methodology. Now I was careful to state that it is the case with businesses requiring degreed engineers. Web development shops in SA probably follows a more agile approach, the only one I know of, Entelect for instance is fully agile as far as I can tell, but I don't really know anybody there. It could also be that only me and my network is experiencing this, it is all anecdotal, but then again, I doubt there is some kind of study that can give you a better picture. I am based in Centurion in case you were wondering. Also its not about if Waterfall / Agile is best, its because the contracts are generally setup with fixed deliverables, which suits waterfall best. Lastly even with honours degrees the curriculum is set, and the professors aren't too keen on changing it too often.