How do you choose Waterfall or Agile for projects?

Srikana -

Most companies going through an agile transformation will create some sort of profiling checklist to assess how suitable a project is to follow one lifecycle vs. another - a number of different criteria can be consulted to decide including:

- level of uncertainty regarding the requirements & solution approach
- level of technical and operational risk
- ability for the customer (or a very close proxy) to work closely with the team on a daily basis
- number of external dependencies or delivery partners
- ability to deliver the desired outcome in pieces vs. as a whole
- ability to dedicate core team members close to or at 100%

Kiron

This decision for me depends on the scope (agree with Kevin: well defined it invites waterfall) and also on maturity level of available project team (are they able to act agile?) and also it depends on related expectations of the principal (is agile accepted and consequences known?).
There are many other things to be aware of, that´s why I prefer to ask the team to decide on some given preconditions and guidance (in case of the role of a mediator is appropriate).
But let me return a question: What are the elements of both methods we all are choosing to accomplish a decision? Maybe a hybrid PM method is advantageuos for current project requirements - and if so, what elements are able to combine?

Thank you Eric. For a software Agile project can planning and execution be separate sprints?