Waterfall and Dr. Winston Royce

At recent conferences, especially OOPSLA, I and others in the agile 
community were taken to task for not learning from history. 
Specifically, we were castigated for creating a them/us divide 
between prior delopment processes and agile processes. We were 
advised that we could only have done this division through ignorance, 
since the previous efforts contained many of the elements and, 
perhaps, even the essence of agility.

At OOPSLA, we defined the essence of agility as the ability to be 
creative, to determine the right thing to do and then do it. Other 
aspects, such as iterations, increments, self-organization, 
emergence, collaboration were important supports, but without the 
creativity, agile 
loses its heart.

So, when I was directed to the seminal papers on waterfall, I was 
quite hopeful to learn from my mistakes. After all, I had 
implemented numerous waterfall methodologies, including SADM, SSDM, 
SDM, Navigator, ForeFront, Method/1, and Summit. And none of them 
were agile or had the attributes of agile. But, I was advised that 
these were improper implementations of the paper that Dr. Winston 
Royce published in 1970, which included such agile mechanisms as 
iterations and complete freedom to move up and down within the 
waterfall.

So I read the paper, "Managing The Development of Large Software 
Systems" which is available in the Session 9 ISCE ACM archives. Dr. 
Royce wrote the paper based on his 9 years of experience in 
spacecraft planning, command and post-flight analysis systems. His 
first comment was that "analysis and coding" are the essential steps 
to an development effort "which involve genuinely creative work which 
directly contributes to the usefulness of the final product." He then 
goes on to undercut this by saying "Many additional development steps 
are required, none contribute as directly to the final product as 
analysis and coding, and all drive up the development costs."

Dr. Royce then goes on to describe a very extensive waterfall model 
for development. Iteration is allowed, but only "iteration with the 
preceding and succeeding steps (phases) but rarely with more remote 
steps in the sequence. The virtue of all of this is that as the 
design proceeds the change process is scope DOWN to manageable 
limits."

Documentation - Dr. Royce, "My own view is quite a lot...the first 
rule of managing software development is ruthless enforcement of 
documentation requirements ... Management of software is simply 
impossible without a very high degree of documentation." Dr. Royce 
indicates that a 1000 page spec document is appropriate for a $5m 
project, mostly because "a verbal record is too intangible."

Dr Royce's paper brings forth many sound concepts, such as get a 
formal structure, clear delineration of types of work, and roles. 
However, his paper is the mother of all waterfalls and the mother of 
all of the things which agile is intended to remedy. Great for the 
time, an important step forward, but not appropriate for most 
applications that I know about at this time.

Ken


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