Even those that developed and industrialised waterfall no longer believe it has value, and they still struggle with the tyranny of Taylorism. While 81% of all development shops say that they are adopting agile, the reality is far from it; only 22% do short iterations, 16% have ordered backlogs, & 13% do retrospectives! They still lack feedback loops. This talk will take a walk through history from 1890 through to the present and follow the rise and eventual fall of Waterfall in the very organisation that developed it; the US Military-Industrial Complex. From communities through the industrial revolution, mechanisation of the workforce, the first MBA’s, the pursuit of hierarchical plan-driven solutions, and bureaucracy to the realisation of reality and the struggle to change.
Are you seeing teams that continually struggle with finding a sense of flow? Is it difficult to see how work moves through the system? Is it hard for a team to deliver anything within a sprint because there are too many dependencies or hidden work st…
