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Sunday, October 30, 2011

Waterfall development is like shooting a big rocket

I had a good day in Hamburg, joining the ThoughtWorks workshop about Continuous Delivery.

Vlad, the main trainer, gave the following statement:
Agile development puts the business in the driver seat.
Got it, and for me it's worth to add:
... and the driver is not blindfold.

So, how to interpret "Waterfall development" in the context of this nice analogy? For me its
Waterfall development is..... You spot a target, a few kilometers away. Then you load your big rocket, which takes ages. By the way you do not take a look at the target while loading the rocket. Then you fire the rocket, and you almost hit the target. Just 600m off since the big rocket is not very precise, and furthermore, the target moved since you last took a look at it. 
And of course the team required to handle the rocket is 10 times larger than the agile team, and the rocket costs millions.