"Waterfall" is just a pejorative term used against the kind of project management that uses a Gantt chart, which kinda looks like a waterfall. This kind of pro

"Waterfall" is just a pejorative term used against the kind of project management that uses a Gantt chart, which kinda looks like a waterfall. This kind of project planning is necessary when you've got engineering steps that are time sensitive and take months to years. Like if you're building a large bridge you need to schedule the resources to do individual steps a long time in advance. Writing software was initially run like this and there was a big pushback because most of those old school engineering methodologies just aren't justified because when you're writing software all of the steps look pretty similar and the design/build/test cycle can go through a full cycle in minutes instead of years and you get to do it millions of times instead of, like for a bridge, only once. Those engineering practices are still necessary when you're building things, sometimes a bit less so with electronics hardware these days we have prototyping that can turn around very quickly, but still if you're doing a large physical engineering project, you do lots of "waterfall" because that's the best tool for the job because the job requires it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart