4 ms·

The paper you and "gujk" are referring to, I believe must be Winston Royce's paper. It's wrong to say that the paper is a description of how not to do software

by MortenK 15y ago

The paper you and "gujk" are referring to, I believe must be Winston Royce's paper. It's wrong to say that the paper is a description of how not to do software development. Rather, it's suggestions for a set of improvements to the process, while retaining the sequential nature. In the paper, Royce considers waterfall to be a good process, but with flaws which result in high risks. These flaws is what he addresses in his paper. His suggested approach is derived from pure waterfall, and is very much similar. It falls into the "modified waterfall" category of life cycle models, together with a group of other similarly waterfall-derived models.

eli 15y ago
He said, and I'm quoting, that the pure waterfall method is a good concept "but is risky and invites failure." He described how it leads to massive cost and schedule overruns. It was definitely a process that he did not think you should use. His proposed solutions that you call "modified waterfall" are modified quite a bit. (As an aside, he never used the word "waterfall.") The paper is here: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/wate...
- MortenK 15y ago
  I have read the paper multiple times over the years. The quote "is risky and invites failure" is correct. However, another quote, even on the very same page: "However, I believe the illustrated approach to be fundamentally sound. The remainder of this discussion presents five additional features that must be added to this basic approach to eliminate most of the development risks." These suggestions are to 1) Add an additional (preliminary) design phase, after requirement analysis. 2) Much greater documentation. 3) Perform the entire sequential process twice (not x amount of iterations, just two times). 4) Additional activities and documentation during testing phase. 5) Involving the customer. His diagrams require close scrutiny, as on first inspection it seems the process is markedly different, when it is really not. It is still an entirely sequential waterfall process, just with an extra phase (preliminary design).

by MortenK 15y ago

eli 15y ago

He said, and I'm quoting, that the pure waterfall method is a good concept "but is risky and invites failure." He described how it leads to massive cost and schedule overruns. It was definitely a process that he did not think you should use. His proposed solutions that you call "modified waterfall" are modified quite a bit. (As an aside, he never used the word "waterfall.") The paper is here: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/wate...

MortenK 15y ago
I have read the paper multiple times over the years. The quote "is risky and invites failure" is correct. However, another quote, even on the very same page: "However, I believe the illustrated approach to be fundamentally sound. The remainder of this discussion presents five additional features that must be added to this basic approach to eliminate most of the development risks." These suggestions are to 1) Add an additional (preliminary) design phase, after requirement analysis. 2) Much greater documentation. 3) Perform the entire sequential process twice (not x amount of iterations, just two times). 4) Additional activities and documentation during testing phase. 5) Involving the customer. His diagrams require close scrutiny, as on first inspection it seems the process is markedly different, when it is really not. It is still an entirely sequential waterfall process, just with an extra phase (preliminary design).