The waterfall is a project management approach where a project is

completed in distinct stages and moved step by step toward ultimate

release to consumers. You make a big plan upfront and then execute

linearly, hoping there won’t be any changes in the plan.



When you take traditional project management and apply it to software

development, you get Waterfall. As such, no one invented Waterfall -

instead, we gave it a name once we realized there are other ways to

manage projects (like agile project management

[https://activecollab.com/blog/project-management/agile-project-management]).



Waterfall was the first software development methodology, inherited

from the manufacturing and construction industry, where you can't

afford to iterate (after you've built a bridge, you can't go back to

"improve" the foundation). But because the software is prone to

frequent change and issues, Waterfall is not the best solution.



Waterfall is often mentioned alongside Agile and stands in contrast to

it. The main difference is that Waterfall doesn't react ...