To me, much of what has been said about Waterfall is a strawman. Firstly, the idea that no-one ever iterated doing Waterfall is just not true. The idea that Gantt charts are some sign of evil is, IMO, misplaced. Like all tools, they can be used poorly - but so long as you keep them regularly updated, they can be quite powerful.
In a prior job, another dev - a lovely guy - claimed that Waterfall projects always failed, which was news to me as I'd worked on dozens of them and none had failed.
I feel like the take home message is perhaps that we tend to mythologize processes and make them into caricatures of reality. The actual truth is always more complex and more nuanced. Which, ironically, I think is kinda the point of the Agile Manifesto. At any rate, I certainly feel that most people I've ever met who think that "doing scrum" is Agile are less agile than the people I used to work with doing Waterfall. It's not about processes, its about people and interactions.
In a prior job, another dev - a lovely guy - claimed that Waterfall projects always failed, which was news to me as I'd worked on dozens of them and none had failed.
I feel like the take home message is perhaps that we tend to mythologize processes and make them into caricatures of reality. The actual truth is always more complex and more nuanced. Which, ironically, I think is kinda the point of the Agile Manifesto. At any rate, I certainly feel that most people I've ever met who think that "doing scrum" is Agile are less agile than the people I used to work with doing Waterfall. It's not about processes, its about people and interactions.