Adaptive Software Development Adaptive Software Development
(ASD) is a software development process that grew out of rapid
application development work by Jim Highsmith and Sam Bayer. 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 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. The word speculate refers to the paradox 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. Collaboration refers to the efforts
for balancing the work based on predictable parts of the
environment (planning and guiding them)