Are Agile and Waterfall in violent agreement? Another fairytale...
Tom ConnollyCEO| TCA Coaching and Training LtdCork, County Cork, Ireland
The people are unhappy with King Waterfall's ivory tower. They can understand Agile better, she walks among them, and listens to them, and they can see how she takes their concerns and their questions on board and alters her course accordingly. Princess Agile was born in the mountains. But King Waterfall is very perturbed because he sees Agile getting so much attention since she came into his kingdom. He is perturbed at how the people seem to love her iterations - especially as he himself has told them that there is not really such a thing as a pure waterfall. He has encouraged them to be rational, and to unify their efforts. He has told them to get out of the river if they see danger downstream, and get back in again upstream with better weapons. But they listen to her more easily. Are Agile and Waterfall in violent agreement? Saving Changes...
Hi Tom, from my point of view they are not. The discussion "waterfall" vs. "agile" leads to nowhere-land.
When you read Winston Royce original paper ("Managing the development of large software systerms"), he himself highlighted iterations. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Agile and Waterfall are not matter to comparison then it has no sense to discuss about it. In fact you can apply Agile using Waterfall life cycle process. On the other side, it good for me reading people like @Peter above who has read and understanding Royce paper. Royce talked about iterations as @Peter stated. People confuse sequential with waterfall. Saving Changes...
The sad thing is that Royce's caveat to avoid a pure waterfall approach and to be willing to iterate back was missed by many organizations. But why I am surprised? His paper was written in 1970, and folks have been ignoring the lessons of Greenleaf & McGregor from their respective books written more than a decade earlier...
Kiron Saving Changes...
Tom ConnollyCEO| TCA Coaching and Training LtdCork, County Cork, Ireland
Thanks all - that is my point - Royce in particular warned against pure waterfall. As a very wise colleague from Singapore once said to me "The extreme of anything is bad". Saving Changes...
Drake SettsuProject Manager / BloggerHi, United States
Since we are using a fairytale theme. The way I see it is Waterfall and Agile are opposites and they attract eachother and get married and have a child called Lean.
They lived happily ever after in the new kingdom called Hybrid Land. Saving Changes...
They co-exist but aren't fully compatible, like water and oil. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Maybe we need to go beyond Waterfall and Agile; time for a revolution? :) Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
There certainly seems to be a bandwagon effect here.
I really appreciate the insights I learn from all of you. And thank you for the paper reference. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Now I know that it has no sense to participate in this type of debates, not for my debatemates comments above, because the topic has no sense. Now I know what fairytale means. Saving Changes...
Tom ConnollyCEO| TCA Coaching and Training LtdCork, County Cork, Ireland
I love all the comments! Sergio - have I upset you? I hope not. I think it is good to compare methodologies but my view is one should not apply any methodology blindly. One should learn from them all - but to me the true skill of a PM is knowing what is appropriate for every project. Andrew - glad you have got some good info and to me that's what its all about. Mounir - revolution is always happening I think :-). Sante - very wise! But my opinion is that they are more like gin and tonic - good apart, better together. Drake - I always look at Agile as project management and Lean as process management. Kiron - maybe the only lesson we learn from history is that we never learn enough? Peter - I think to a degree we are all in nowhere-land. The longer we live the less we know I sometimes think!
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2 replies by Sergio Luis Conte and Tom Connolly
Nov 04, 2017 5:30 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
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Not at all. But once again you are making a mistake. Agile is not a methodology. Is a practice or discipline. Waterfall is not a methodology. Is a life cycle process based on predictive life cycle model. If we do not understand it then we fail from the beginning.
Nov 04, 2017 6:43 PM
Tom Connolly
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Thanks Sergio _ I think you know a lot more than I do about these processes, models and disciplines - however I am interested in taking the best of all of these things and using them in real life projects without getting too concerned about which school they belong to. My aim in comparing Waterfall to Agile is to show how the wisdom of the ages and the energy and iconoclasm of youth can be combined to achieve success.
"Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition."
