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Naturally everyone does waterfall, just at different points. Even if I did the leanest form of Kanban, I have to check the requirements of each ticket, understa

Naturally everyone does waterfall, just at different points. Even if I did the leanest form of Kanban, I have to check the requirements of each ticket, understand them, translate them to maybe a prototype/discovery phase, come up with tests and an implementation strategy and verify the result somehow. That's just waterfall at the finest possible granularity. Waterfall doesn't mean not to iterate. It also doesn't mean to not build prototypes or MVPs. It just pushes the risky decisions back to people that are actually paid to make these decisions. Scrum is not just a framework for micromanaging, it also conveniently removes any domain responsibility from management. It's always "the team decides". (Of course, just on paper. Try to decide to do tech debt only for a couple of sprints with your team and see how management reacts.) Besides, waterfall is just the straw man of scrum zealots. I once proposed a new team structure where frontend and backend wouldn't be mixed because I observed that most stories didn't have an overlap but where rather mostly one or the other. The scrum master was shocked that I wanted to get rid of "cross functional" teams: "What do you want to do instead, waterfall?". For them it was inconceivable that cross functionality was not equivalent to scrum.

hnben 3y ago
> Waterfall doesn't mean not to iterate I don't want to be pedantic, but waterfall does mean exactly that by definition (or at least it used to). There are plenty of variations, that include prototypes or MVPs or iterations (e.g. V-Model, Spiral model). > waterfall is just the straw man of scrum zealots You can't just change the definition of a word, and then call people using the original definition "zealots", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
- rramadass 3y ago
  > but waterfall does mean exactly that by definition No. This article The Myth of the 'Waterfall' SDLC gives you the details (archive version since the site seems to be down) - https://archive.is/jbBta https://archive.is/jbBta
- atoav 3y ago
  The question is whether any of the "classical" examples for waterfall project managements out there didn't iterate at all. Having iterations is not incompatible with waterfall per se. E.g. you can plan to have 3 prototypes and then one final product beforehand. You can also decide to skip project phases if they are not needed. When people hear waterfall they think of a pure methodology, when in practise the methodology nearly always will be (and was) sacrificed if the need arises. So as we are discussing a thing we do in practise, we shouldn't discuss it as a theoretical framework in the vacuum of space, but as something that will be (a)bused in reality. As a film guy I am a big fan of clear up-front planing (you probably know some of the things that go into films, treatments, scripts, story-boards, concept art, ...) A film is very waterfall-y in how it is produced. But good directors maintain their flexibility on set by maintaining a balance in how serious they take the script on set and where other solutions present themselves that are a thousand times better, e.g. because the location/the actors or whatever is more striking than any writer could have imagined etc.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    A term has a meaning, and the fact that people don't actually practice it doesn't mean you can just change what it means. > A film is very waterfall-y in how it is produced. But good directors maintain their flexibility on set by Right. So they don't stick strictly with waterfall, even though the industry tends to be "waterfall-y". My understanding is that in some (non-software) industries, waterfall is practiced because you really can't go back and change things. Or maybe you could, but it would mean increased cost and delays to the extent that you might as well have started all over. There was a time when people thought "software engineering" was really engineering, so you had to follow traditional engineering best practices. eg. Do it right the first time, make plans and stick with them. It just turns out that this doesn't work for software, and as you said, nobody is really stupid enough to do strictly that now.
- BoxFour 3y ago
  > waterfall does mean exactly that by definition Hilariously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model#Royce's_final_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model#Royce's_final_...
doctor_eval 3y ago
> Waterfall doesn't mean not to iterate Technically, that’s exactly what it means. The entire design is signed off and completed before the implementation starts, and there is no feedback loop. But waterfall itself was a straw man in a paper intended to recommend a much more complex process. It’s more than ironic that it became seen to be a valid process in and of itself. (Sadly I’ve lost the link to the original paper, but if I find it I’ll update my comment) > Besides, waterfall is just the straw man of scrum zealots. The irony is that scrum itself is often just a wrapper for a waterfall process with all the problems it comes with. So many corporate implementations of scrum are AINO - agile in name only. Management that doesn’t understand the complexity of software is doomed to oversimplify it. That said, if you are working iteratively - one feature at a time, with feedback - then whatever you call it, that’s not waterfall.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  > But waterfall itself was a straw man I disagree. I've been in many projects which looked exactly like the stereotypical waterfall, with the expected results (delays, death marches).
  - Illotus 3y ago
    Originally in the W. Royce article from the 70s it was a strawman put up by Royce. He then went on to define much more reasonable iterative model. Unfortunately the strawman was what started getting traction.
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    You misunderstand, the idealised waterfall model was literally presented as a straw man. The horror is that it got picked up as a legitimate SDLC. Hence your exposure to it. It’s almost like they saw the pictures and didn’t read the words.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Yes, the person that invented the name couldn't possibly imagine anybody was stupid enough to practice that thing he described. At the same time, that process he described was the standard procedure for government and any large corporation contracts.

hnben 3y ago

> Waterfall doesn't mean not to iterate I don't want to be pedantic, but waterfall does mean exactly that by definition (or at least it used to). There are plenty of variations, that include prototypes or MVPs or iterations (e.g. V-Model, Spiral model). > waterfall is just the straw man of scrum zealots You can't just change the definition of a word, and then call people using the original definition "zealots", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

rramadass 3y ago
> but waterfall does mean exactly that by definition No. This article The Myth of the 'Waterfall' SDLC gives you the details (archive version since the site seems to be down) - https://archive.is/jbBta https://archive.is/jbBta
atoav 3y ago
The question is whether any of the "classical" examples for waterfall project managements out there didn't iterate at all. Having iterations is not incompatible with waterfall per se. E.g. you can plan to have 3 prototypes and then one final product beforehand. You can also decide to skip project phases if they are not needed. When people hear waterfall they think of a pure methodology, when in practise the methodology nearly always will be (and was) sacrificed if the need arises. So as we are discussing a thing we do in practise, we shouldn't discuss it as a theoretical framework in the vacuum of space, but as something that will be (a)bused in reality. As a film guy I am a big fan of clear up-front planing (you probably know some of the things that go into films, treatments, scripts, story-boards, concept art, ...) A film is very waterfall-y in how it is produced. But good directors maintain their flexibility on set by maintaining a balance in how serious they take the script on set and where other solutions present themselves that are a thousand times better, e.g. because the location/the actors or whatever is more striking than any writer could have imagined etc.
- hnfong 3y ago
  A term has a meaning, and the fact that people don't actually practice it doesn't mean you can just change what it means. > A film is very waterfall-y in how it is produced. But good directors maintain their flexibility on set by Right. So they don't stick strictly with waterfall, even though the industry tends to be "waterfall-y". My understanding is that in some (non-software) industries, waterfall is practiced because you really can't go back and change things. Or maybe you could, but it would mean increased cost and delays to the extent that you might as well have started all over. There was a time when people thought "software engineering" was really engineering, so you had to follow traditional engineering best practices. eg. Do it right the first time, make plans and stick with them. It just turns out that this doesn't work for software, and as you said, nobody is really stupid enough to do strictly that now.
BoxFour 3y ago
> waterfall does mean exactly that by definition Hilariously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model#Royce's_final_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model#Royce's_final_...

doctor_eval 3y ago

> Waterfall doesn't mean not to iterate Technically, that’s exactly what it means. The entire design is signed off and completed before the implementation starts, and there is no feedback loop. But waterfall itself was a straw man in a paper intended to recommend a much more complex process. It’s more than ironic that it became seen to be a valid process in and of itself. (Sadly I’ve lost the link to the original paper, but if I find it I’ll update my comment) > Besides, waterfall is just the straw man of scrum zealots. The irony is that scrum itself is often just a wrapper for a waterfall process with all the problems it comes with. So many corporate implementations of scrum are AINO - agile in name only. Management that doesn’t understand the complexity of software is doomed to oversimplify it. That said, if you are working iteratively - one feature at a time, with feedback - then whatever you call it, that’s not waterfall.

The_Colonel 3y ago
> But waterfall itself was a straw man I disagree. I've been in many projects which looked exactly like the stereotypical waterfall, with the expected results (delays, death marches).
- Illotus 3y ago
  Originally in the W. Royce article from the 70s it was a strawman put up by Royce. He then went on to define much more reasonable iterative model. Unfortunately the strawman was what started getting traction.
- doctor_eval 3y ago
  You misunderstand, the idealised waterfall model was literally presented as a straw man. The horror is that it got picked up as a legitimate SDLC. Hence your exposure to it. It’s almost like they saw the pictures and didn’t read the words.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    Yes, the person that invented the name couldn't possibly imagine anybody was stupid enough to practice that thing he described. At the same time, that process he described was the standard procedure for government and any large corporation contracts.