Iterative Design and the Reality of Backtracking in Software Development

In 1970, Winston W. Royce published a paper “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems.” Later authors cited it as the justification for what had come to be called the "waterfall process." Yet Royce had quite specifically described that process as one that is "simplistic" and "invites failure."

That's weird. People not only promoted a process Royce had said was inadequate, they cited him as their justification. And they ignored all the elaborations that he said would make the inadequate process adequate.

What's up with that? In this episode, I blame metaphor and the perverse affordances of diagrams.

I also suggest ways you might use metaphors and node-and-arrow diagrams in a way that avoids Royce's horrible fate.

In addition to the usual transcript, there's also a Wiki version.

Other sources

• Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 1980.
• Laurent Bossavit, The Leprechauns of Software Engineering, 2014.
• George A Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information,” 1956.

Credits

Dawn Marick for the picture of the fish ladder. Used with permission.