Thursday, June 08, 2006

The Waterfall is not too long, the River is too wide...

Bob Lewis at his Infoworld blog/column is answering a reader question; "What is Waterfall methodology?"

Bob defines it, and trots out the old standbys about how it takes too long, and you can never go back to a previous phase, etc... and several commenters chimed in to agree, Agile proponents I presume... so I had to leave a comment too:

http://weblog.infoworld.com/lewis/archives/2006/06/what_waterfall.html?source=NLC-ADVICE2006-06-07

...which said:

The problem isn't with (the) Waterfall steps, its that the River is too wide. If you have a large project, good heavens, don't do all the requirements at once. Scope out an overall architecture, and break it up into pieces. Plan for multiple phases and releases, then do the first one, then the next one, etc. etc.. You look at any 'alternative' methodology, they will end up doing the same waterfall steps, but in iterations or some other cleverly-named approach. Sounds the same to me.

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About Me

Ontario, Canada
I have been an IT Business Analyst for 25 years, so I must have learned something. Also been on a lot of projects, which I have distilled into the book "Cascade": follow the link to the right to see more.