Origin of Waterfall? (With Study Questions)

Over the weekend I ran into this tweet by Charles Betz, whose Twittter bio describes him as “Digital management analyst, author, and instructor. DevOps lead @ Forrester. Adjunct @ U of St Thomas – MN. Occasional jazz riffs.”:

Study questions to the original waterfall paper by Royce. Great work by @Morendil. This is what we mean by "critical reading" in the liberal arts, and which we need more of in digital/Agile/DevOps. https://t.co/mrQdVcdG2V

— Charles T. Betz (@CharlesTBetz) May 4, 2019

Study questions to the original waterfall paper by Royce. Great work by @Morendil. This is what we mean by “critical reading” in the liberal arts, and which we need more of in digital/Agile/DevOps. https://morendil.github.io/programming-history/royce-worksheet.html

I’ll admit I’d never seen “the original waterfall paper”…wasn’t even aware of it. However, I read it before work this morning. Great stuff…as is the study sheet.

Up until a recent change at work, my last 7ish years have been in Quality Engineering, so I was especially appreciative of what can be learned from Royce’s paper in that area. Perhaps my favorite quote:

Many parts of the test process are best handled by test specialists who did not necessarily contribute to the original design.  If it is argued that only the designer can perform a thorough test because only he understands the area he built, this is a sure sign of a failure to document properly.  With good documentation it is feasible to use specialists in software product assurance who will, in my judgement, do a better job of testing than the designer.

With the tension between documentation and speed in Agile and DevOps, this might make some cringe :-)…but it is true.

I’d check out both the paper and the study questions. (My copy of the paper is from USC.)