🌊Waterfall Ways of Work

Video Version

Credit: Tech Fleet https://youtu.be/M7Eo7YTu08Q

What's Waterfall?

First, we're going to learn about what's Waterfall. The way that you're learning in school is called waterfall.

Waterfall is a phased approach of work.

1. Requirements

2. Research

3. Design

4. Develop

5. Test

6. Release

A picture showing the stages of Waterfall method of working: Requirements, Design, Implementation, Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance. Credit: https://project-management.com/waterfall-model/

Example of Waterfall

Let's say that you're hired by a company to make a scooter. You have a year and a half to make that scooter.

A picture of a scooter shown in the example of Waterfall. Credit: Tech Fleet https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xStUc5Gg_o6tjYAu-cwE_j6kXESscoRD_sI10LKWgDE/edit#slide=id.gc8ac60c30d_0_120

And so you plan the whole thing. You make a plan all at the beginning. You're going to do your requirements where you gather all the information that you need up front, and then you do all your research, and then you do all your design, you design the whole thing, and then you go into the development phase, and you develop the whole thing, and then you do your test phase and you test the whole thing.

Everything is sequential in Waterfall. Everything happens before the next. There's no design happening in the development phase, there's no research happening in the design phase.

It's all in steps.

A waterfall process for building the scooter: Requirements, Design, Develop, Test, Release. Credit: Tech Fleet https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xStUc5Gg_o6tjYAu-cwE_j6kXESscoRD_sI10LKWgDE/edit#slide=id.gc8ac60c30d_0_105

So that's what you do for your scooter. You go out in the world, and you go and talk to people. And, of course, they want everything under the sun. They want a GPS, and they want a backup camera, and they want a cat chariot. They want to carry their cat around because who doesn't want to carry their cat into the world?

They want it all. You write it all down. You write down artificial intelligence, and driving up to 90 miles an hour. And having a touch screen, having that cat chariot and the three seater.

An extraordinary cat chariot scooter, dreamed up by users in our fake Waterfall scenario. Who doesn't want a cat chariot?! Credit: Tech Fleet.

And you've got your requirements phase done and you move on to the next.

A picture showing a person thinking about the requirements related to the scooter. Credit: Tech Fleet https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xStUc5Gg_o6tjYAu-cwE_j6kXESscoRD_sI10LKWgDE/edit#slide=id.gc8ac60c30d_0_126

And now you're in the design phase and you design everything that it would ever be. You design the cat chariot and the AI and the GPS and everything that the scooter is ever going to be, you're going to spend three months doing the whole thing all at once. And then it gets into development and the developers build it in chunks.

A blueprint showing the design of a scooter that fully gets designed in Waterfall. Credit: Tech Fleet

And they spend a whole year building it. So they're going to build the wheels, then they build the body, then they build the motor. Then they build the cat chariot, and then they put it all together, and it goes into the testing phase a year and three months in. And they're done the test, and it's ready to launch.

The process of waterfall development. Credit: Tech Fleet https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xStUc5Gg_o6tjYAu-cwE_j6kXESscoRD_sI10LKWgDE/edit#slide=id.gc8ac60c30d_0_147

You spend a year and a half building this, and you hit market.

Behold! Ye Olde Cat Chariot!

An extraordinary cat chariot scooter, dreamed up by users in our fake Waterfall scenario. Who doesn't want a cat chariot?! Credit: Tech Fleet.

All of a sudden you realize that nobody wants it. The market's changed. This person told you that they wanted a GPS, and they wanted a cat chariot at the time, but then their life changed. The circumstances around them changed. Now they have a smartphone, they don't need a GPS anymore, and their cat ran away.

They just ended up buying a bike six months ago. Meanwhile, your team worked 18 months and didn't talk to anybody while they did it. They didn't talk to any users, they didn't validate anything, they just worked behind the scenes, phase to phase to phase to phase, and delivered 18 months later. They just spend all that time and money delivering a scooter that nobody wants.

A person thinking "What a waste!" Credit: Tech Fleet https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xStUc5Gg_o6tjYAu-cwE_j6kXESscoRD_sI10LKWgDE/edit#slide=id.gc8ac60c30d_0_179

You may have been on projects before where this has happened to you. You work for so long on a thing that's so complicated and hard, and you develop the perfect result, and you do it, you deliver it, and it may not even get used. And this is how people are trained.

You might be thinking to yourself, This is fine. This is how it is. What happened on the next team project? Did you do the same thing?

There is a better way of working UX. There are better ways and more effective ways to deliver value to whomever in the world.

The Rules of Waterfall

1. You do everything in phases

2. You do your research and then you do your requirements And then you do your design and then you do your development And then you do your testing

3. Clients and users don't say anything until the end if you mess up or you learn something new

4. You don't change anything because in theory, the product requirements are already set in waterfall.

5. You don't change anything or incorporate feedback until you're finished the project. With Waterfall, you're going to deliver what you agreed to.

Typical Waterfall Deliverables

1. Product Requirements document

2. Work contracts

3. Research reports

4. Full design specifications

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