Question on waterfall methods for SW Development

[Pat McCann]

"Rusty Williamson" <rwilliamson at unno.gers.com> writes:

> Under what circumstances would a 'waterfall' methodology be better or
> preferable to an 'iterative' methodology?  Any information on this would be
> greatly appreciated.

They are essentially the same thing, except that with one you might only
get one iteration or one per year or two.  With very long projects,
customers (eg, DoD) usually will want reams of documentation convincing
them that you (or someone else) are doing the right things to make it to 
the next step before they fork over more money.  The docs also allow
them to more easily recover if they want to get someone else to do it.
It's more costly to document iterative methodology well because you have
to do it more often and engineers document poorly and slowly.

It also depends on the quality of your engineering.  If they never make
mistakes, you don't need the feedback that iteration gives you and you
can take advantage of the more efficient WF method.

Yah, Yah, I know they are not the same thing and even DoD is changing, 
but that's my short answer.  And I'm not arguing for WF in general.