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 i

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.