> Trying to 'kill the old ways' without understanding them is how we get junk such as Scrum. You can hardly do better in understanding the "old ways" than read

> Trying to 'kill the old ways' without understanding them is how we get junk such as Scrum. You can hardly do better in understanding the "old ways" than reading Royce's paper. And the difference between Waterfall and Agile is not just iteration, it's rapid feedback. As noted in Royce's paper, Waterfall is inherently one way, hence the name. You don't see water flowing uphill, at least not without a lot of external force. Agility means feedback comes at every step of the way, not just at the end, when testing. This is also the difference between what's been called "the Toyota way" vs prior automobile manufacturing. In the traditional automobile factory, the car was put together and completed, then a team of engineers would exercise it to find and fix defects. The Toyota was was to find and fix defects along the assembly line, and perhaps more importantly, learn from defects found during assembly to prevent or reduce defects before they appear. The same applies to Waterfall vs. Agile. Instead of completing the entire system and then testing it and fixing defects, as waterfall would have, even when done iteratively, agility works out the defects in every aspect and uses what's found to reduce the rate of defect creation.