Comments on: Monsters, Names, Pot-Roast & The Waterfall Model

By: Jerrel

Jerrel — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:33:00 +0000

waterfall brought me here.. nice post

By: Large Planter Pot

Large Planter Pot — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:22:00 +0000

I'm so love this blog, already bookmarked it! Thanks.

By: Large Pot

Large Pot — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:30:56 +0000

I'll back again for sure, thanks for great article

By: Why the waterfall methodology illustrates how software should not be implemented | Brian Heys - software testing consultant/contractor

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:03:51 +0000

[…] Read Monsters, Names, Pot-Roast, & the Waterfall Model at antonymarcano.com. This entry was written by Brian, posted on 10 August 2010 at 1:30 pm, filed under Curated content, Software development. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Automation: why record and playback is a solution to the wrong problem […]

By: July 15, 2010: An Apple Comment A Day « Rails Test Prescriptions Blog

July 15, 2010: An Apple Comment A Day « Rails Test Prescriptions Blog — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:57:24 +0000

[…] Marcano has a brief historical anecdote on the history of the term Waterfall as applied to […]

By: Markus Gärtner

Markus Gärtner — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:21:35 +0000

The more interesting part of the Royce paper is the conclusion in the end:
"Figure 10 summarizes the five steps that I feel necessary to transform a risky development process into one that will provide the desired product. I would emphasize that each item costs some additional sum of money. If the relatively simpler process without the five complexities described here would work successfully, then of course the additional money is not well spent. Ii, my experience, however, the simpler method has never worked on large software development efforts and the costs to recover far exceeded those required to finance the five-step process listed."

Now, the question is, whether Agile is a way to overcome the five-step process and outperform the costs I need to invest into the methodology. Maybe it's time for science to re-visit this statements after 40 years.

By: Antony Marcano

Antony Marcano — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:34:48 +0000

Here-here!

By: Antony Marcano

Antony Marcano — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:33:48 +0000

Thanks for the comment Rob.

Maybe he was talking about the way people did things at the time. He had some great points, either way. Regardless, there are those that argue in favour of a waterfall approach (either explicitly or indirectly). I meet them occasionally.

Sometimes I meet people who put forward arguments against iterative approaches. I can also use some of the arguments in my blog post in these situations too.

I agree that if someone is in favour of a Waterfall approach and uses the name explicitly, just showing them Royce's article probably won't change their opinion. Showing them my article might

People I meet who do talk in favour of a waterfall approach (as a moniker or otherwise) do tend to find it a revelation when I share Royce's words with them since few of those I've met have ever read the article.

Thanks again for your comment.

By: jasongorman

jasongorman — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:41:42 +0000

I think it's more subtle than that. The reality is that nobody who delivers anything useful is really doing waterfall. They have to iterate towards a workable solution just like the rest of us. To hit the nail on the head first time is as unlikely as a golfer hitting a hole in one. What tends to happen is that they try to get it right first time, and then end up with a whole bunch of change requests (often masquerading as bug reports) which they have to tackle in very short feedback cycles during what's commonly referred to as a “stabilisation phase”. On these projects, this is where most of the actual lessons are larned and value is added.

By: Matt Heusser

Matt Heusser — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:16:20 +0000

“Only now at the end, do you understand” – any post with an Emperor Palpatine quote in it must be good. And the other stuff was good too!