In defence of Waterfall

Being a history buff, I have been travelling extensively in Eastern Europe in the last few years and always take the walking tours of the cities I visit. Every single tour I have been on sounded like scripted liberal propaganda on socialism — as if nothing good has ever come out or will out of the idea of socialism. Meh.

This always reminded me of…

Waterfall has become socialism for the millennial tech generation — the catch-all term to absorb all the blame; while Agile being the magic cure for all ills.

Like every other thing in life, there are pros and cons of both Agile and Waterfall and the text-book Agile religiously promoted as a dogma post the dot com boom does not and will not work for every situation. There are plenty of things we can learn from Waterfall — after all, it did steer the rise of hundreds of technology products and projects for half a century before the Agile gurus started preaching it was stupid to use it.

No software development methodology is a panacea — they are all based on some underlying premises, that is not correct in all circumstances. The waterfall is still appropriate for some projects and can be applied to pretty much all projects with lessons learnt from its failures and success of Agile.