The effects of Agile Programming can alter the five desirable properties of modeling tools and techniques as documented by Pfleeger. The agile methodology does promote human understanding and communication through the use of short iterative software development life cycles which forces stakeholders to review the project and adjust the project for any requirement changes. Due to the consistent evaluations of a project and requirements, process are continually being refined, upgraded, and compared against other alternatives to ensure the best design delivered to the client. Due to the short repetitive development cycles, increased time is devoted to process management due to the fact that requirements and designs could be constantly changing. This requires additional forecasting, monitoring, and planning for each iteration. Because things can change so rapidly, automated guidance in performing process must be updated for each iteration because the environment and the available reusable process could change. In addition, the original guidance and suggestions for the project also need to be updated to account for these changes as well. In essence the automation of process execution is supported by the agile methodology because during every iteration all processes must be tested, evaluated to ensure process integrity and compliance with the customer’s requirements.
I do not think the agile approach diminishes modeling, in fact I think it increases the modeling because before the start of every development cycle, modeling must be checked for accuracy based on the changed requirements. So in essence the reduced time spent initially designing the models is in fact gained as the project completes every iteration of the project.
