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> I've heard some software devs state that "the waterfall method was never really used". What they mean by that is that the person who invented the phrase "wat
by kqr 4y ago
> I've heard some software devs state that "the waterfall method was never really used".
What they mean by that is that the person who invented the phrase "waterfall method" did it specifically to tell the world about something that did not work. In fact, even going back to the NATO software engineering conferences of the 1960s, they were discussing how development needs to be agile.
But sure enough, few big organisations got that memo.
- Jtsummers 4y agoDOD codified Royce's waterfall (which he, himself, did not name in that paper) in a set of documents on officially endorsed software acquisitions processes. There were others, but Waterfall was one of them. Its critical failing is that it's an idealized process that cannot withstand uncertainty or change, but it looks really pretty in charts so people selected it without serious thought put into it.