Cruising over the Waterfall

The first and most traditional of the plan-driven process models is the waterfall model. Shown in Figure 2-2, it was created in 1970 by Winston Royce,³ and addresses all of the standard life cycle phases. It progresses nicely through requirements gathering and analysis, to architectural design, detailed design, coding, debugging, system testing, release, and maintenance. It requires detailed documentation at each stage, along with reviews, archiving of the documents, sign-offs at each process phase, configuration management, and close management of the entire project. It's a model of the plan-driven process.

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