
Did Agile definitely kill Waterfall? - sandrobfc
https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/did-agile-kill-waterfall/
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mimixco
Big companies with lots to lose will always use a waterfall process. Facebook
can move fast and break things because there's little risk to them, but
fintech, legal, military, and medical software will always require peer review
and a waterfall process. When I was a mainframe programmer at IBM, it was the
waterfall process that protected customers from untested code and, as a
result, you don't hear much about giant hacks or thefts in things like bank
accounts, Social Security checks, or industrial manufacturing. That's because
the suppliers of those programs don't want to move fast and break things. They
want to move slowly and be sure that software works, to the best of their
ability, before shipping.

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sandrobfc
I don't think that Agile is always about being more risky. Sure, Waterfall is
a safe way to go in most projects, but what about the possible losses in costs
and effort that may come from it? However, I do get your point regarding
safety for the client itself, that don't want to risk shipping an "unfinished"
product.

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mimixco
It is inherently risky in that it encourages shipping first and fixing stuff
later. This is the opposite of what you do with something like someone's bank
account. (Yes, ETH Solidity developers, I'm talking to you.)

I absolutely love the agile process and I'm a big believer in pair
programming, which was part of the original doctrine but is hardly mentioned
today. That being said, no one is smart as all of us and there are inevitably
things in your code which you (two) as developers won't immediately discern.
Waterfall, though protracted and boring, is crucial for identifying and fixing
those problems before they ship.

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gregjor
No. In fact a lot of waterfall projects just get called agile.

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sandrobfc
A lot of processes, overall, are called Agile just for the sake of marketing.
But concerning the way in which they operate, would you say that Waterfall is
still the most used method nowadays (just masked as Agile most of the times)?

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gregjor
I would say ad hoc has always been the dominant software development method,
and still is. Whether we call it waterfall or agile depends on external
trappings of project organization and depth of requirements. But once underway
development proceeds the same way: stumbling from one set of vague
requirements and moving deadlines to another. Few organizations have the
discipline to define complete and unambiguous requirements in advance, or to
predict development times with any accuracy (waterfall). Likewise few
organizations have the discipline to discover requirements and build in the
agile feedback loops. In the end it comes down to either slogging along or
luck, and it’s always been like that.

A few teams somehow come together and produce working products that succeed.
Most teams don’t. What you call the method doesn’t matter much, because team
and interpersonal dynamics drive development success and failure far more than
technical skills and tools or management structure and planning.

