Just Stop It! (A Note on Wrapping Waterfall Plans in Iterations)
A wise man once said, " I've got a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel! ” Unfortunately in software it isn’t quite so easy. Simply renaming a broken process doesn’t really change the way a project is set up. Unfortunately a growing number of managers seem to believe they can turn their projects into lithe, agile weasels simply by wrapping pre-planned waterfall projects into iterations and calling it “agile". Projects like these tend to ring several alarm bells, such as: The entire project is estimated up front (usually taking up a huge amount of development team time) Stories are split by service, and not by end-to-end functionality (usually a sign that key design decisions have already been made without being validated by working code). Ie the now discredited smokestack development approach. So a team (or even separate teams!) might be developing the front end first. Then later develop one of the services the front end uses later....