The Hybrid-Agile Design of Experiments Methodology

A DOE (Design of Experiments) is the laying out of a detailed experimental plan in advance of doing the experiment. Optimal DOEs maximize the amount of information that can be obtained for a given amount of experimental effort. The traditional DOE methodology is waterfall-type methodology implying a sequential and linear life-cycle process. The success of the experiment and usefulness of the results are highly dependent on the initial experimental setup and assumptions, and does not allow to go back and change something that was not well-documented or thought upon in the design stage. The fast-changing software development industry have made it understandable that the traditional waterfall methodology for developing systems, which follows similar patters to the traditional DOE, lacks the agility required for developing robust systems. These limitations have triggered the development of agile: a type of incremental model of software development based on principles that focuses more on flexible responses to change, instead of in-depth planning at the design stage. This paper proposes the hybrid-agile DOE methodology – a methodology that incorporates agile principles in traditional waterfall DOE methodologies – to design effective experimental layouts that allow for improvement during the experimental trial process. The methodology is applied to the natural ageing of adhesives tapes for building applications. This methodology can overcome traditional DOE, by adding agility in the whole process, especially in cases where the investigated products lack prior information and are characterised by large variability.