How long are you willing to wait before you find out you're late, over budget, the thing you're build doesn't work, that the team is unhappy, that the customer is looking for alternatives? Or a myriad of other questions.
If you ask and answer these question, why in in the world would anyone ever use the term "waterfall" to describe a project management method.
- Because they are professional amateurs
- Because they are incompetent as project managers
- Because they live on another planet
For mega projects in the NASA world, the answer is two (2) weeks. You heard me two weeks. Every month there is a contract performance report due. The NASA 533M. At mid-month the "flash" report is due, showing what the program performance will be when we get to the end of the month. To support the "Flash" and the 533M we have to take weekly earned value.
For that to work we have to have predefined physical percent complete forecasts for all work packages planned to be completed within the reporting period.
Add to this an Earned Value Management System Description requirement that Work Packages can not cross more than one accounting period and you've got the basis for answering question for a multi-billion $ program.
Now if NASA can do this, why can't an internal IT project do it?
The answer is in the mirror. Because the "will" to do it is simply not there.
