Waterfall - The Dark Age of Software Development Has Returned!
I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain’t so. — Everybody’s Friend, 1874, by Josh Billings To my horror, more and more often the past few years, I have seen people advocating for using the Waterfall method of software development. I have also seen it in job descriptions, for example “we use a mix of Agile and Waterfall”. Why am I horrified? Because Waterfall was never intended to become a software development method. Waterfall is now, as it was from the beginning, a way to describe why many large software development projects fail. There is no scenario where Waterfall is a good approach to software development ! To back up that statement, let’s go back to the origin of Waterfall, a whitepaper by Dr. Winston Royce, Managing the Development of Large Software Systems from 1970. The Origin of Waterfall Note : The origin of Waterfall goes back quite a bit further than 1970. In another, later article, Waterfall vs. Agile: Battle of the Dunces or a Rac