IT industry has gone through a major revolution within last decade. The project execution model has changed a lot.

Waterfall Model – In this model – there were almost constant requirements and was like a fixed bid project to be delivered at agreed upon timelines. IT managers used to plan around people, process and technologies and communicated to customers.

Typically in this model – there were six major phases in this cycle:

Requirement Gathering -> Design -> Coding & Unit Testing -> System & Integration Testing -> Production Deployment -> Post Production Support

Agile Model – Waterfall model had its own advantages but it had major drawback. Requirements used to get reviewed and finalized at the beginning of software development lifecycle – so it turned out to be cat when dog was expected. It led to client dissatisfaction.

Agile solved this problem by introducing shorter release cycles in form of program increments and sprints. It had requirement gathering, design, coding & unit testing and system testing in each sprint. Sprint demo to customer also solved the dog turning cat in the end.

However, Integation and Production deployment in the end led to many conflicts between development & Operations team and also issues in production release.

Automation involves a very broad range of technologies including robotics and expert systems, telemetry and communications, electro-optics, Cyber security, process measurement and control, sensors, wireless applications, systems integration, test measurement, and many, many more.