Bulldozer00's Blog

On big, multi-year, multi-million dollar software development projects, a series of  “high-ceremony” formal reviews are almost always required to be held by contract. The figure below shows the typical, sequential, waterfall review lineup for a behemoth project.

The entity below each high ceremony review milestone is “supposedly” the big star of the review. For example, at SDR, the structure and behavior of the system in terms of the set of CSCIs that comprise the “whole” are “supposedly” reviewed and approved by the attendees (most of whom are there for R&R and social schmoozing). It’s been empirically proven that the ratio of those “involved” to those “responsible” at reviews in big projects is typically 5 to 1 and the ratio of those who understand the technical content to those who don’t is 1 to 10. Hasn’t that been the case in your experience?

The figure below shows a more focused view of the growth in system artifacts as the project supposedly progresses forward in the fantasy world of behemoth waterfall disasters, uh, I mean projects. Of course, in psychedelic waterfall-land, the artifacts of any given stage are rigorously traceable back to those that were “designed” in the previous stage. Hasn’t that been the case in your experience?

In big waterfall projects that are planned and executed according to the standard waterfall framework outlined in this post, the outcome of each dog-and-pony review is always deemed a great success by both the contractee and contractor. Backs are patted, high fives are exchanged, and congratulatory e-mails are broadcast across the land. Hasn’t that been the case in your experience?