A card system veteran, eh? That's great. We have several guys around the office that tell stories of the coding sheets and punch cards.. Typically the stories involve dropping a stack of ordered cards or some other nightmare, and are always accompanied by the 5 mile walk to work – in waist deep snow – uphill both ways…..

The "old-school waterfall" as you describe it may well be in danger, but I think that there will always be a place for the heavier, more document-centric methodologies. Regulated industries, distributed teams, large (or multiple) development organizations, and business stakeholders that are difficult to get time with, for example, are all factors that seem to push an organization toward a more traditional methodology as opposed to the "Agile" methodologies that are all the rage right now.

And if you want to head up the "Waterfall Preservation Society" I'll pitch in a buck. Almost sounds like an environmental concern, doesn't it?

I've been in the IT development business for far to long and most of my projects have been 'staged' where you do a bit, review a bit, deliver a bit and work in teams. The only real old-school Waterfall was back in the days when the analyst wrote a spec, I coded (using a pencil) onto coding sheets, which were then punched to card etc. Batch processes lend themselves to waterfall development, although it's not compulsory!

Anyway if Waterfall is endangered, we should establish the environment that it thrives in so that we may preserve this cultural icon and oddity.

For most of my career I worked on projects where all the cross functional team members were direct reports to the development manager. We never experienced these problems. There was always a lot of collaboration on these teams more than i’ve ever seen in PMO organized projects.