Advantages and Disadvantages of the Waterfall Methodology
In my personal opinion I believe the waterfall method is one of the worst methodologies to use when developing larger systems because it leaves is no room for mistakes. As the name implies the waterfall methodology does not allow for projects to go back up stream to recover from design errors, missing and/or limited requirements. In addition, hidden bugs are not usually found until the testing phase. This can prove to be very costly and time consuming to the developer and the client.
According to NCycles.com, the waterfall methodology structures a project into separate stages with defined deliverables from each phase.
Define
Design
Code
Test
Implement
Document and Maintain
The advantages found by Ncycle.com to this methodology are:
Ease in analyzing potential changes
Ability to coordinate larger teams, even if geographically distributed
Can enable precise dollar budget
Less total time required from Subject Matter Experts
The disadvantages found by Ncycle.com to this methodology are:
Lack of flexibility
Hard to predict all needs in advance
Intangible knowledge lost between hand-offs
Lack of team cohesion
Design flaws not discovered until the Testing phase
References:
NCycles.com (2002). Retrieved from http://www.ncycles.com/e_whi_Methodologies.htmmethodology on April 17, 2009
