The Great Delivery Debate

The Great Delivery Debate
By Chris Moody

Dr. Winston Royce first described a model for working with large software systems in 1970, which we’ve grown to know as “Waterfall”. Interestingly enough what many never read in his writings on software development, is the following quote: “I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.” (Source: Dr. Winston Royce. Proceedings, IEEE WESCON, August 1970) Why could he have said this? Could it be that many times requirements are emergent? Perhaps it’s that estimating large and complex bodies of work based on a requirements document can be incredibly inaccurate?

While I have a large bias towards Agile methodologies, as a consultant it’s my responsibility to evaluate what truly is the best solution for a client. I was recently on a project in a marketing organization, and while there certainly were some opportunities for Agile principles to be utilized, a framework like Scrum or Kanban just would not have been possible. I’ve heard some waterfall purists sum agile up to a bunch of people who want to get out of documentation and commitments to timelines. Ouch. But I also hear a lot of criticism from agile truthers about anyone who leverages waterfall as being clueless and archaic. Can’t we all just get along? Yeah, we can actually. But we have to start to recognize that Agile and Waterfall have value in different ways.

I’d love to have some discussion about what is seemingly a great divide between Agile and Waterfall methodologies. To help those in each “camp” understand why a specific method has value towards solving their business problems. What are some examples where you think a Waterfall process was truly the best solution for a project? What were some of the identifiers you had to come to that conclusion? Have you had success with using a “ScrumerFall” model where the requirements and design are all done up front, but execution is done in sprints?

Chris Moody is a a project manager/consultant working for a consulting firm in the Seattle area. In recent years he has been working with agile teams more abundantly. You can read more from Chris on his blog.

PMHut Team

PMHut Team

PMHut.com is a website dedicated to providing PM articles, detailed project management software reviews, and the latest news for the most popular web-based collaboration tools.

1 Response

  1. Avatar Adam russell says:

    Firstly, the best discussion on this divide that I’ve read is by the inimitable Barry Boehm together with Richard Turner called “Balancing Agility and Discipline A Guide for the Perplexed” – well worth a read

    Secondly, any project that agonises over methodology is waving a big red flag for me. It’s a pointless discussion and just masks fundamental problems that will cause delivery impairments or failure later on.

    Steer the project into different directions and bypass the methodology debate. It doesn’t matter

Leave a Reply