> Doesn't Waterfall incorporate feedback? In my memory and experience, it does.
No, by definition. Do you see a stream of water back to the beginning of waterfall in any waterfall on the planet? Nope.
No, by definition. Do you see a stream of water back to the beginning of waterfall in any waterfall on the planet? Nope.
[1] http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970...
You can actually tell that the methodology was developed for a different time period, when you would have to schedule time in order to run your program on the mainframe, instead of just hitting build on your machine.
Ex: Testing reveals a corner-case that was never accounted for in the design. You can't just re-code, you have to go back up and redesign, then code the new design, then retest.
Royce's recommendations to minimize these problems are a) more and better design, and b) more and better documentation
In contrast, the Agile approach is to try to slice the work into finer and finer tasks, so these same activities can span a few sprints. It works in the small, but loses the forest for the trees.
I did a few projects in waterfall style about 20+ years ago, but my memories are faint. Our PM used a UML modeling tool to model classes and relationships, then exported it into Java. We wrote a lot of useless documentation. I developed a good habit to write documentation immediately, when memory is fresh, to avoid the pain of writing it later.
I'm not referring to real waterfalls[1], I'm referring to the Waterfall Software Development Process, which is an iterative process that requires almost constant feedback.
[1] Real waterfalls certainly do have the water returning to the top of the fall, only it's not as a stream and it's not immediate :-)