The Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Waterfall Model

The incremental model is an intuitive approach to the waterfall model. Multiple development cycles take place here, making the life cycle a “multi-waterfall” cycle. Cycles are divided up into smaller, more easily managed iterations. Each iteration passes through the requirements, design, implementation and testing phases. A working version of software is produced during the first iteration, so you have working software early on during the software life cycle. Subsequent iterations build on the initial software produced during the first iteration.

Waterfall Model operates in a waterfall process tree. It has various phases such as requirement, design, implementation, verification, and maintenance that provide a successful execution to any system development. This model can be used in the development of frequent shopper program

The project will be managed using a modified waterfall technique. In this approach, the initial two phases of the

Once a tool or vendor is determined the design team will work on implementing the design. The design will be implemented as part of the project plan timeline and Smith will provide developer testing in addition to end-user acceptance testing. This ensures that the final product matches the goals of the system as laid out in the project plan. Once acceptance testing is completed the system will be implemented and the system will enter its training phase as indicated in the project plan.

Using the waterfall approach the system developers will be able to focus on one piece of the system and move on each part separately. This will give the design team more time to focus on small sections of the new coding. Moving from one stage to the next means that each step has been checked thoroughly and is completed.

The rigid methods employed by the Waterfall approach makes it easy to manage because the team cannot move onto the next stage if all of the

After having reviewed definitions and perspectives by three author groups, I’m inclined to conclude that waterfall methodology is essentially defined by its insistence upon the completion of product development steps in a sequential manner in order to accommodate a client’s need for a product or tool that will enable their business to be performed in a temporally defined effective (or desired) manner. By utility, for the sake of quickly delivering a product to the satisfaction of its client, a development team who employs the waterfall method may do so because of waterfall’s logical yet rigid structure. Its step-by-step nature promotes an easy to follow guide, though many of the tasks involved in the process of its development are anything but easy. Further, waterfall’s rigid nature seems to reinforce the notion of its logic, if but for the sake of timely product completion and client budget. Due to its methodological rigidity, however, products developed by way of waterfall may tend to be rigid in their own right.

It has been observed that in software development, change is unavoidable and must be accommodated for in the life cycle. A number of alternative process models have been introduced in order to attempt to fix the issues in the Waterfall model. An early modification to the standard Waterfall method introduced prototyping as a feedback and discovery mechanism to identify misunderstandings and omissions early on in the process (Neill, 2004). Other process models attempted to further get rid of the risks of misunderstandings by breaking down projects

In addition, defining requirements can be difficult and sometimes early assumptions are flawed. Some opponents of Waterfall argue that it is impossible to fully understand the system requirements until the development phase and that some performance issues cannot be predicted or are not evident until the testing phase. Waterfall is not well-suited for custom software projects that rely heavily on continuous customer feedback and changing needs because communication and collaboration is not always stressed; once the requirements are established, the customer may have little contact with the development team until delivery. (Chatterjee, 2010) Because Waterfall projects are not based upon small iterations that can be easily and promptly modified, occasionally critical errors are found in the late stages of a Waterfall software development project that require scrapping the project and starting over; a very costly and disappointing result. Another negative is that some programmers believe that Waterfall is out-of-date and that it does not accommodate for the unknown factors that are a constant challenge in designing leading edge technology. Developers who abide by

Inability to discover problems during system testing: Subsequent to the fact that changes to preceding processes or stages are barely made possible, it becomes very difficult to trace problems with the system development until the stage of system testing. At the fifth stage of the process where system testing is done, different testing methodologies are available to unravel the bugs that were committed during the previous phases. It is unfortunate that there are no mini-testing stages for each of the phases until the whole process gets to the testing phase. This is because there is an implication that if any faults and problems are detected at the system testing stage, the whole process might have to be repeated. The reason of a possibility of starting the whole process again is that identification of specific cause of problems may even be difficult because a lot might have gone into the construction of the system.

The two models for to be considered and discussed in this section are the Business Process Re-engineering and Kaizen models.

The article mainly focused on comparing an evolutionary method to the waterfall method. The author of the article believed that the waterfall model is very unrealistic and dangerous to use as a primary development tool for any project (Gilb, 1985). The waterfall method is scheduled for a single finished date and all planning, design and analysis is done in the very beginning before the software coding begins (Gilb, 1985). The evolutionary model is based on delivering to a real user, measuring the added value to the user, and adjusting any issues (Gilb, 1985). A key difference emphasized in the article was that a system built in the evolutionary model is real and always changing while the waterfall method is not (Gilb, 1985). The waterfall method is more focused on what the software will do as compared to the evolutionary method which is more focused on how well the software will work for the client (Gilb, 1985). Gilb had the opinion that the waterfall method is no longer a method to follow (Gilb, 1985). Back in 1985, Gilb wanted to show readers that the evolutionary method was the way software should be developed and that the clients were more interested in a technology that was perfected for them (Gilb, 1985). As seen in the waterfall approach, it was very common to have a software developed for a client and the client would not even know who the developer was (Gilb, 1985). The waterfall method was effective but it is a method

The waterfall model consists of five phases such as requirements, Design, implementation, verification and maintenance. The method is a sequential design process where progress is seen as flowing downwards in a steadily manner, each development phase has its own distinct goals. The model is similar to water flowing down a cliff it can only flow in one way and cannot go back up it is the same with waterfall development ,after a development phase is completed it proceeds to the next development phase you cannot go back.

1) Waterfall method: The waterfall model is a sequential design process, used in software development processes, in which progress is seen as flowing steadily

Waterfall model is based on sequential process that is used in software development process. It takes place in steps. It is called as waterfall because it moves step by step in downward direction. As seen in manufacturing and construction site, each process is well structured and carried out step by step, in software development Waterfall model carries out all phases in sequential manner. All the phases like Conception, Initiation, Analysis, Design, Construction, Testing, Implementation and Maintenance are carried out in a sequential manner, step wise. It is stated that the first formal description of Waterfall model was made in 1970 in the article written by Winston W. Royce. Though the first use of waterfall model was made in 1976 in the article written by Bell and Thayer.