Adaptive software development (ASD) is a

software development process In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or s ...

that grew out of the work by Jim Highsmith and Sam Bayer on

rapid application development Rapid application development (RAD), also called rapid application building (RAB), is both a general term for adaptive software development approaches, and the name for James Martin's method of rapid development. In general, RAD approaches to ...

(RAD). It embodies the principle that continuous adaptation of the process to the work at hand is the normal state of affairs. Adaptive software development replaces the traditional

waterfall A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in seve ...

cycle with a repeating series of ''speculate'', ''collaborate'', and ''learn'' cycles. This dynamic cycle provides for continuous learning and adaptation to the emergent state of the project. The characteristics of an ASD life cycle are that it is mission focused, feature based, iterative, timeboxed, risk driven, and change tolerant. As with RAD, ASD is also an antecedent to

agile software development Agile software development is an umbrella term for approaches to software development, developing software that reflect the values and principles agreed upon by ''The Agile Alliance'', a group of 17 software practitioners, in 2001. As documented ...

. The word ''speculate'' refers to the

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of planning – it is more likely to assume that all stakeholders are comparably wrong for certain aspects of the project’s mission, while trying to define it. During speculation, the project is initiated and adaptive cycle planning is conducted. Adaptive cycle planning uses project initiation information—the customer’s mission statement, project constraints (e.g., delivery dates or user descriptions), and basic requirements—to define the set of release cycles (software increments) that will be required for the project. ''Collaboration'' refers to the efforts for balancing the work based on predictable parts of the environment (planning and guiding them) and adapting to the uncertain surrounding mix of changes caused by various factors, such as technology, requirements, stakeholders, software vendors. The ''learning'' cycles, challenging all stakeholders, are based on the short iterations with design, build and testing. During these iterations the knowledge is gathered by making small mistakes based on false assumptions and correcting those mistakes, thus leading to greater experience and eventually mastery in the problem domain.

References

*''Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems'', Highsmith, J.A., 2000 New York: Dorset House, 392pp, *'' Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products'',

Addison-Wesley Addison–Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson plc, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison–Wesley also distributes its technical titles ...

, Jim Highsmith, March 2004, 277pp, * *''Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, Roger Pressman, Bruce Maxim.'' {{ISBN, 978-0078022128 Software development process Agile software development