See you all on waterfall 2006



  • I hope we all can meet on waterfall 2006, we can take a chat face to face while we wait our sessions to start.



  • Ah yes, the waterfall method.  I remember quite clearly way back in my Software Engineering class (Ok, so it was just 2 months ago) learning about how the waterfall method was bad and how incremental or agile methodologies are much better.  We the proceeded to work on our Software Engineering lab which only seemed to teach us one thing:  how to develop using a waterfall method.  This week, risk analysis and planning.  Do only these things.  Get a 10 page document signed off by the teacher.  Next week is design.  Only do design.  Get the design signed off by the teacher.  You are not allowed to start implementation until the last two weeks.  You must do all your programming in these last two weeks.  You should have done enough planning in the 8 weeks leading up till implementation to do all your programming in two weeks without any problems.  At all.  Incremental development?  Screw it, do it all in one shot.



  • Hahahaha that's an awesome website! It almost looks legitimate.

    Some of my favorite bits:

    User Stories and Other Lies Users Tell Us by Mike Cohn

    Pedantic Information Delivery <FONT color=#000000>by Mark Janney </FONT>

    Project Bureaucracy: How to Generate Millions of Jobs without Gaining any Productivity
     (whose speaker is able to fill out German tax forms and apply for a driver's license in almost any country of the world)

    And finally, for you Spinal Tap fans: CMM Level 6: It's Bigger Than Five So It Must Be Better

    Comedy gold, thanks for sharing Taliesin!

     



  • @Manni said:

    Hahahaha that's an awesome website! It almost looks legitimate.

    ...

    <font size="5">
    T</font>he date of the conference is also a giveaway.




  • @SeekerDarksteel said:

    Ah yes, the waterfall method.  I remember quite clearly way back in my Software Engineering class...


    At least you had something approaching real software engineering, even if your instructor was 3 decades out of date (did he have you do it in Cobol?). When I took software engineering it was barely distiguishable from some CP III course, except the projects were larger. Instructor still gave out the requirements, had us design and implement, average one month each with no communication, rinse and repeat.

    "* One Class Is Plenty"  <3



  • @SeekerDarksteel said:

    Ah yes, the waterfall method.  I remember quite clearly way back ...

    ... way back, when we started *my current project* (for a government agency/directorate/thingy)... All the elements of the waterfall are present, even down to the details such as; constantly changing requirements/adding requirements, no contract worth more than the paper it's written on, the better part of the scandinavian forrests in their last death throes waiting to become part of our extensive yet already outdated documentation etc, etc, etc...

    Good thing our company have a couple of private sector, good paying customers, to support our "safe" government work...



  • @foxyshadis said:

    @SeekerDarksteel said:

    Ah yes, the waterfall method.  I remember quite clearly way back in my Software Engineering class...


    At least you had something approaching real software engineering, even if your instructor was 3 decades out of date (did he have you do it in Cobol?). When I took software engineering it was barely distiguishable from some CP III course, except the projects were larger. Instructor still gave out the requirements, had us design and implement, average one month each with no communication, rinse and repeat.

    "* One Class Is Plenty"  <3

     

    Nah, we programmed in Java.  The teacher wasn't out of date so much as she just sucked at her job.  She extolled the virtues of modern processes in the lecture, then guided us through the lab in a decidedly anachronistic fashion.  It wasn't that she wanted us to learn the waterfall method, it's that she didnt have any other way of setting up the lab to demonstrate a method that wasn't just straight through. 



  • IMO the waterfall method is not inherently bad; it was the right method for the given constraints then.
    Agile methods require a toolset that supports the flexibility the method promises.
    For example, if you need a new column in a database to fullfill new (or previously ignored) requirements, it's easy and cheap to run an "alter table" statement on a relation database. If your database is a VSAM file or even a magnetic tape, it's not that easy.



  • The waterfall method would be an improvement to what we use here at the State!  Currently, all of our developers use the cowboy coding methodology and are siloed to the project.  You're tax dollars at work.



  • @SeekerDarksteel said:

    Ah yes, the waterfall method.  I
    remember quite clearly way back in my Software Engineering class (Ok,
    so it was just 2 months ago) learning about how the waterfall method
    was bad and how incremental or agile methodologies are much
    better. We the proceeded to work on our
    Software Engineering lab which only seemed to teach us one thing:  how
    to develop using a waterfall method.




    That's of course idiotic, pedagoically speaking, but the real WTF is
    not how the lab was conducted, but the dogmatic nonsense that was
    taught in the class. There's nothing at all wrong with the waterfall
    model when the project is small, or when the requirements are clear and
    won't change, both of which was most likely true in your case. If you
    had tried to use an incremental or iterative process, there would have been a lot
    of additional overhead and paperwork for no apparent gain.



    And a far bigger factor than the actual process you use is that you use
    one at all, that you actually (learn how to) DO formal requirements
    analysis and design rather than just starting to program and piling on
    ad hoc changes.







  • Looks like their changing the meaning of this websites WTF acronym...



    "The crux of the WUP methodology lies in being able to get into the
    "Waterfall Think Funk" or WTF for short. Not at all like "Object
    Think," WTF is much easier to grasp and to realize in full. While
    snobby people with beards and pipes wax philosophical about Objects,
    Inheritance, Encapsulation, Unix, penguins, and what not, the WTF
    philosophy permits only one single program unit (well, sometimes two if
    there is a user interface like a printer). In the WTF world, stuff just
    runs downhill. It is so easy you can think of it like falling off of a
    cliff — once you do it, you never forget."




  • Nice! So was this method in the GoF, or what?



  • @bugsRus said:

    You're tax dollars at work.

    No I'm not. I hardly ever work... and I resent being compared to a struggling weak currency.



  • @Taliesin said:

    I hope we all can meet on waterfall 2006, we can take a chat face to face while we wait our sessions to start.

    I'm looking forward to :

    Crossword Puzzles as Requirements Documents: Make them Work for It

    Ruby On Snails: Slow Down Development With This New Framework by Dave Thomas and Mike Clark

    wordUnit: A Document Testing Framework by Kent Beck

    and of course my favourite

    User Stories and Other Lies Users Tell Us by Mike Cohn

     

    Sadly their registration page is not yet ready ... 


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