One set of problems I have often seen with “the Waterfall” are\u00a0the Communications Problems, particularly the over-reliance on communication by documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Communication-By-Documentation (CBD) –\u00a0What’s so bad about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n It seems so correct and natural to use documents to\u00a0capture\u00a0and communicate all the details of what we are working on that it is almost unthinkable to question this practice.\u00a0 But I am going to try.<\/p>\n The sort of documentation I am discussing here are requirement docs, graphs, ER diagrams, models of all sorts, analysis docs, architectural diagrams, and etc.\u00a0 (There is a lot of etc., by the way.\u00a0)\u00a0 I am not saying\u00a0that\u00a0documentation is not needed,\u00a0or that it is not useful, it is just that we have to be careful to protect our project from the problems that these documents bring with them.\u00a0\u00a0[NOTE: I am NOT talking about user documentation – things like help docs, instruction manuals, support group FAQ’s… these things are part of what the user expects as part of the project]<\/p>\n Here is a short list of some of the problems of communication-by-documentation\u00a0I’d like to cover:<\/p>\n