Waterfall model a project development approach?

 

Waterfall : is a traditional approach that separates the product development process into groups of related tasks that must be completed before moving on to the next group or phase. Hence, it requires extensive planning. Establishing all steps before you start working on the product’s development helps minimize hazards and further errors. This has your team always knowing what they should work on next and what to expect in the future.

The 5 core phases commonly used with Waterfall are:

Requirements: finding out and analyzing what the client’s needs are and what the final product should do.

Design: choosing the right technology and creating the product’s mockups and detailed architecture.

Implementation: solving problems, implementing solutions, and completing tasks

Verification (Testing): finding out if the product matches the established performance requirements and conducting quality assurance.

Maintenance: fixing errors and bugs to ensure the product can be used easily without interruptions.

Waterfall practitioners believe that putting more time and effort into the first stages of product development can prevent risks from happening and save you hours of maintenance time. Waterfall also provides clear and detailed timelines and costs. These will guide your team towards becoming more productive.

The downside of Waterfall is that it’s rather outdated for the requirements of modern software engineering. Writing code and simultaneously performing quality assurance is rather difficult since each stage of this methodology depends on the previous one and no activities overlap. With Waterfall, teams have to wait for those in charge of the preceding steps to finish their work. If the latter are late, all other tasks could be postponed.

Best for: Construction, manufacturing, and media production.