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"slower" and "waterfall" are orthogonal. Waterfall is a theoretical idea that sounds nice, but fails miserably in practice - the key problem being the assumpti
by beagle3 11y ago
"slower" and "waterfall" are orthogonal.
Waterfall is a theoretical idea that sounds nice, but fails miserably in practice - the key problem being the assumption that if you are diligent enough at collecting the requirements and constraints, you can resolve them at the design and implementation stage. The reality is that there is never enough time/information/budget/knowledge/resources to map the requirements and constraints, and furthermore, those change all the time so even in the unlikely case that you have managed to map the territory, by the time you deliver the solution, the territory has changed.
One can argue theoretically for waterfall as much as they want (and in fact some people do), but the collective experience with waterfall is so abysmal that whoever wants to waterfall needs to argue against the failures, rather than for the method.
- collyw 11y agoI think more large scale projects have succeeded using waterfall than Agile.
- beagle3 11y agoI'm not aware of any large scale projects that were attempted using Agile. Are you? FWIW, I don't think Agile is the answer - there's a continuum between (and beyond) waterfall and agile, and it's not one-method-fits-all anyway. For that matter, I can hardly think of large scale software projects that succeeded in the sense that they were on time, on budget, and satisfied the requirements a-posteriori, regardless of methodology. Regardless, how many projects that people here are involved in are really large scale ?
- collyw 11y agohttp://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/25/139218/worlds-biggest-agile-software-project-close-to-failure http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/05/25/139218/worlds-bigges...
- beagle3 11y agoI'm not defending agile, but what is described in the abstract cannot fit with what I am familiar with as "agile" - an almost defining quality of an agile process (as I was introduced to it) is that at any given moment, the status of the project is transparent and well known by all stakeholders. Thus, if you discover all of a sudden that the project is late and over budget, you have been sleeping at the wheel. (Note: This is not a "no true scottsman" argument. And I honestly think agile is only a good match for some projects, and not e.g. infrastructure. Nevertheless, this does not sound like the "agile" I know).