Water-Scrum-Fall is a software development methodology that combines the elements of both Scrum and waterfall development methodologies. Most agile organizations out there in the world are currently following the Water-Scrum-Fall procedure because of the effectiveness associated with it.
Back in the day, waterfall was the most common development methodology. However, organizations understood the shortcoming associated with sticking to a waterfall methodology. For example, they were spending too much of time unnecessarily on the project upfront. On the other hand, they had to face numerous challenges at the time of implementing change as well. However, those organizations were not ready to go fully agile as well. That’s where they started using a combination of waterfall and agile methodologies, which is known as Water-Scrum-Fall.
Water-Scrum-Fall can be considered as a flexible approach available for development of a product. That’s because it is helping the development teams to fully understand the problem that has to be solved, while providing them the opportunity to come up with a practical method to solve it. Organizations that follow Water-Scrum-Fall methodology are adhering to the waterfall method when they are planning, project management, and budgeting. However, the development teams are adhering to agile in their day to day developments. This will eventually benefit the development team to get their work done.
One of the most important aspects that you can find in a Water-Scrum-Fall environment is that the project would still need high-level project planning. However, it would have governance and approval gates, where it is following a traditional approach as per the waterfall method. In the meantime, the development team would adhere to non-agile interactions with the project and front end teams. This would eventually help them to adhere to the Dev-Ops and continuous delivery principles, while ensuring smooth transition in between all deliverables.
— Slimane Zouggari