Waterfall projects, myth or reality?

Let’s start with a confession. I don’t know what a‘flat white’ coffee is.

I can work out it’s a type of coffee drink and it has milk in it, but flat? What does that mean? Is it served on a dinner plate? Or maybe just tipped on the floor!

As a black coffee drinker, I’m never going to drink one. If we end up in a coffee shop together, I might buy you one but you’re drinking it so I don’t really need to know what it is.

Just as long as it’s not served on the floor.

So why am I telling you about my coffee ignorance?

The term ‘flat white’ came into my life with the assumption that I already knew what it was. The coffee shop marketing announced its arrival like it was long anticipated and finally here. There was no explanation of what it was, I never heard anyone ask what it was, so I didn’t feel it necessary to reveal my ignorance in public for something I was never going to drink.

Waterfall projects came into my world the same way.

It wasn’t until I started training that someone mentioned it and I had to look it up. I’d been used to delivering projects in two ways, either in repeated development cycles or in one linear direction.

Repeated iterative development cycle deliveryis based on an Agile approach.

Linear delivery is also known as waterfall, who knew?

Both are valid, Agile is more useful if your final deliverable is less certain at the beginning. Linear is used when there is more certainty about what’s required at the start.