[Blake07] Blake, Chris (2007), “The Art of Decisions : How to manage in an uncertain world”, Financial Times Prentice Hall, UK.

Dr. Winston W. Rovce’s paper titled “Managing the development of large software systems” is by some referenced as the ‘original’ source for what people might generally know as the ‘waterfall method’ (probably due to his figure 2 and call for extensive documentation). But reading the paper, it seems to me that Winston’s proposal is relatively simple, (somewhat) iterative and neither heavy or complicated. Maybe it is just (my guess) that the ‘waterfall method’ has evolved (through added guidance to be helpful) and mutated (due to misunderstandings) into this rigid, heavy, slow process, that it is perceived to be today.

But guidance is (often) better than no guidance, and as such it may be more a question of being able to choose (wisely) regarding what guidance you need rather than attempt to follow *all* of the guidance on offer by the so called ‘rich methods’? And the opposite question is: Do ‘agile methods’ provide enough guidance, for all projects, or only some, and if so then what kind of projects? Will today’s agile (or light, or simple) methods be tomorrow’s ‘rich waterfall’ methods?

I hope this was helpful….

John

Dr Winstons’ paper: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=41801

Btw, if you find that the link for the “Addressing the essential difficulties of software engineering” paper isn’t working then try this one: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0164-1212(94)00067-0