[95014_refugee]

At 34, not old. Maturing, perhaps.

It’s worth reading the original Waterfall paper. If you’ve only ever heard of it as the bogeyman, it might surprise you.

From your tone here, I think you are seeing “people over process” play out in your context. Celebrations? Talking? More talking? Time to do work? These all smell like a sensible organisation doing sensible things. Congratulations, you lucky &^%*&^%&^.

[Jtsummers]

The original paper was very obviously not advocating for the initial process it describes. But it does describe Waterfall, and then it amends it into something that could actually work (specifically adding in feedback loops that Waterfall does not include).

Some fools in industry, DOD in particular, looked at the pretty picture and codified it as an option among several for defined development processes. Then contractors and gov't managers picked it because it was straightforward (on paper) to plan and schedule, and it made it into practice. It's still used by DOD contractors today and it still fails. It's not a bogeyman, but Royce himself is not to blame, he was pointing out the stupidity and illiterate fools missed the point.