# What is the history of the Waterfall Process?

> The 'inventor' of waterfall said in 1970: 'This implementation is risky and invites failure.' He actually recommended an iterative approach for complex software development.

- Date: 2021-01-11
- Source: https://romanoroth.com/en/blogs/what-is-the-history-of-the-waterfall-process/
- Tags: Waterfall, SDLC, Software Development, History, Agile, Iterative Development, Process Models, Methodology Comparison


![Video thumbnail: a surprised Romano Roth beside a waterfall, titled The History of the Waterfall process](/images/blog/what-is-the-history-of-the-waterfall-process-inline-1.jpg)

The “inventor” of the waterfall process 💧 said in 1970: “I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.” 😱

Watch my video to see what a mind blowing 🤯 approach he recommended in 1970:

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The waterfall process 💧 is a software development process first introduced by Dr. Winston W. Royce in a 📝 paper published in 1970 (although Royce did not use the term waterfall in that article).

📑 On page 329 Royce introduces the waterfall process and says: “I believe in this concept, but the implementation described above is risky and invites failure.”

📑 On page 330 Royce shows how the waterfall process can be fixed by introducing an ♻ iterative approach.

👉 Use an iterative approach for complex and complicated software development. 👍

References:
- [Waterfall model: Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model)
- [Royce 1970 Paper (PDF)](http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf)