No One Is Following Your Waterfall Process

A note to executives. Waterfall is anything but.

I have yet to experience a sincere account of a project where work actually moved in one monolithic chunk.

Development is done during requirements, design decision are being made (and remade) during UAT, and requirement changes keep happening right up until the end.

You might think the solution is to get better at waterfall.

You would be wrong. Think about dumping a delivery approach based on century old managment theory.

Your staff will thank you.

Your customers will thank you.

You will thank yourself.

Waterfall processes might seem like a nice way to mitigate risk, or raise efficiency. A simple way to track progress.

In reality they create a dangerous illusion of safety.

They turn executives into ostriches, providing them with a convenient place to hide their heads.

They force your staff into a game of pretense, avoidance, and circumvention.

Spend more time with your workers on the ground, talk to some of your best bees.

They are ignoring your stage gates, they need to get work done.