A LESSON IN CONFLICT MITIGATION: INTEGRATING DIVERGENT DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES

• Main Authors: Brinker, Katelyn R., Marcolina, Rebecca C.
• Other Authors: Kosbar, Kurt
• Language: en_US
• Published: International Foundation for Telemetering 2016
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/624247; http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/624247

The Mars Rover Design Team is dedicated to building a next generation rover that will one day assist astronauts in the field. The complexity of such a project increases when the two conflicting design philosophies of agile software development and traditional waterfall development must work in tandem in order to design and construct a rover within a year. Agile software development promotes the flexible, testdriven production of coinciding design aspects, while the waterfall design philosophy relies on thorough planning and rigid, sequential design schedules. The project managers of the team work to balance these opposing philosophies by fostering individual interests, allowing team members to select their own focus areas within a wide variety of mission critical tasks. This practice accelerates the design and construction of the rover and in turn creates the momentum needed to achieve a common goal while consolidating both agile software and traditional waterfall development.