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New Important industry conference coming up
[link|http://www.waterfall2006.com/|http://www.waterfall2006.com/]

Systems will want to get his app in early.



"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"   --Mark Twain

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."   --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."   --George W. Bush
New Anyone care to explain Waterfall...
...in a short of amount of text... Sounds like they need to rename if to Cliff - as in jump off the edge when things start going to heck.
New How much of it did you read?
I just need to know how much explanation you'll need.
===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New Barely skimmed
Enuf to know the XP and test first are the debil. Just wanted a one paragraph summation, without the marketing hype. :-)
New You never heard of the waterfall methodology?
BTW, you should probably check the conference date to make sure you're free.



"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"   --Mark Twain

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."   --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."   --George W. Bush
New Most projects that I work...
...use the "can we do this yesterday" methodology, followed by scribling of unintelligible text and diagrams on a white board. I've heard tell of waterfall, but as in all methodologies it seems to be more a philosophy than a concrete engineering discipline.
New Near as I can tell

Waterfall is best when you know *exactly* what you want to end up with and *exactly* how you're going to get there.

Tom Sinclair

River: Noah's Ark is a problem.
Book: Really?
River: We'll have to call it "early quantum state phenomenon". Only way to fit 5,000 species of mammals on the same boat.
- 'Jaynestown', Firefly
New Which is like, never
On of the big structured proponenets - DeMarco or Humphreys I think, came clean and admitted that all of his earlier writings on structured analysis and software process were hopelessly naive because he failed to take into consideration the idea that design decisions are often political and not technical. IOW, fuzzy specs often arise out of unresolved disagreements between parties and simply sitting down with pen and paper isn't going to get those issues cleared up.

IOW, in typical engineer fashion he completely failed to grasp the political/social implications of collaborative construction of software.

Iteration, OTOH seems to provide the negotiating basis for reaching consensus.



"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"   --Mark Twain

"The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."   --Albert Einstein

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses."   --George W. Bush
New I've seen it happen
It tends to be more likely to happen on small projects, and is particularly likely to happen on projects whose goal is, "reimplement that".

However normally you're right, it doesn't work that way. Also anyone who has done some serious A/B testing of working applications quickly learns that small details are hugely important. Add the right words to a registration page and you can see a 20-30% boost in business. Put the wrong background on that page and you can lose 15% of potential customers. What are the right words? What is the wrong background? It isn't obvious - that is why you have to test. There is simply no way to figure out details like that up front.

Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
New Check the conference date anyway
===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
New Is that really needed?
I thought for sure the tutorials gave it away.

[link|http://www.waterfall2006.com/martin.html|Nice raygun]

[link|http://www.waterfall2006.com/cockburn.html|bad hair day]

[link|http://www.waterfall2006.com/stalwartanalysis.pdf|ass of a pig?]
Darrell Spice, Jr.            Trendy yet complex\nPeople seek me out - though they're not sure why\n[link|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass|Artistic Overpass]                      [link|http://www.spiceware.org/|SpiceWare]
New sent boss the ink and requested tht the company send me
He sent back a thoughtful note about that for my job he would have a better chance on a conference about nix, messaging or antiabuse meetings. I to his desk to point out a few things.
nailed
:-)
thanx,
bill
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
New Re: Important industry conference coming up
If find yourself getting into battles with waterfall proponents, some useful ammo can be had by going back to the source. The [link|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model|WikiPedia entry on Waterfall] includes a link to Winston Royce's original paper. In it, he first lays out the waterfall that we all know and love, then talks about why it doesn't work, and then suggests that an iterative approach to development is preferable.

I think a number of early Waterfall proponents read the first few pages of Royces paper, thought "ooh, I get it," and then stopped reading.
     Important industry conference coming up - (tuberculosis) - (12)
         Anyone care to explain Waterfall... - (ChrisR) - (9)
             How much of it did you read? - (drewk) - (1)
                 Barely skimmed - (ChrisR)
             You never heard of the waterfall methodology? - (tuberculosis) - (6)
                 Most projects that I work... - (ChrisR) - (5)
                     Near as I can tell - (tjsinclair) - (2)
                         Which is like, never - (tuberculosis) - (1)
                             I've seen it happen - (ben_tilly)
                     Check the conference date anyway -NT - (drewk) - (1)
                         Is that really needed? - (SpiceWare)
         sent boss the ink and requested tht the company send me - (boxley)
         Re: Important industry conference coming up - (dws)

30,000 pounds.... of bananas!
390 ms