From Waterfall to Agile software: Development models in the IT sector, 2006 to 2018. Impacts on company management

The IT sector has been one of the most innovative fields, encountering tremendous development in the last three decades. As many other sectors of activity have been also digitalized, new software development models have been established due to changing customer needs, as well as due to the increased pressure of innovation necessity. This has influenced the traditional models of software development management in the direction of more complex organizations matrices and cooperation between several layers of management, employees and other departments. The objective of the present paper is to determine the main software development models used in the IT sector between 2006-2018, as well as their impact on companies’ management. For this, Delphi method with interviews and questionnaires was applied. The results reveal the evident trend towards the Agile software development model, that implies rapid implementation of new software features in order to satisfy new market needs. The relevance of the present paper lies in the fact that as technology dynamics change, software development models evolve, this aspect being worthy of observation on the company level. Although such models have been widely described in scientific literature by now, few studies have provided insights on the company level regarding specific features and changes in software development models.