Concept / Term · Established

Waterfall

Sequential phases

What does Waterfall mean?

The traditional approach: analysis, design, build, test, deploy, each phase finished before the next begins. Still appropriate where requirements are fixed and regulated.

Category: Project & Delivery
Maturity: Established
Last reviewed: 2026-08-30

Keep exploring

AgileBuilding software in small, frequent steps and adjusting as you go, rather than planning everything upfront.
Scrum / SprintScrum organises work into short, fixed-length cycles called sprints, one month or less and most commonly two weeks, each ending with something usable.
Kanban / WIP limitWork moves across a board of columns with a cap on how many items may be in progress at once. Suits continuous streams of work better than fixed sprints.
BacklogEverything identified but not yet done, kept in priority order. Grooming or refinement is the routine of keeping it ordered and well described.
Epic / User StoryAn epic is a big chunk of work; user stories are the small deliverable slices within it, written from the user's point of view.
Acceptance CriteriaThe specific conditions that must be true before a piece of work counts as complete. The modern descendant of the signed-off requirement.
Definition of DoneThe agreed checklist every item must meet before it is called done: tested, reviewed, documented, deployed.
StandupA short daily meeting, often fifteen minutes, where the team says what they did, what they are doing and what is blocking them.

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