Waterfall Assisted-Acquisition Services, Training, and Education

by Dave Zvenyach and Robert L. Read, PhD

18F Consulting cares about our customers. We want to give you not what you need, but what you want. Developing software is difficult; we understand you want a methodology that provides you with plausible deniability. So, today, we are proud to pre-announce our latest offering: “Waterfall Assisted-Acquisition Services, Training, and Education” (WAASTE).

The federal government has spent literally years perfecting this WAASTE methodology. When it
is released, we promise it will support these features:

• No matter how simple the use case, every component will be highly engineered using the most baroque processes currently available. 
• WAASTE ensures a turnaround time comfortable for government: no faster than 2 years for the first set of deliverables. 
• With WAASTE, project managers have no work to do beyond the initial requirements, ensuring maximum vendor ability to slavishly follow your initial thoughts through to a final product.

18F Consulting is committed to delivering WAASTE to you before our money runs out. In the
mean time, any agency interested in WAASTE should spend two years carefully analyzing
exactly how your software will be Blackberry-enabled 5 years from now. Technology changes
quickly, but the ideas of government are eternal and unchanging. WAASTE guarantees lock-in
of the current understanding of technology through this protracted process.

Through our proprietary WAASTE Requirements™ gathering process we guarantee at least
1500 small, isolated, capricious, and incongruous WAASTE Requirements™ presented to you
electronically in a state-of-the-art XML file. For an additional fee we will conduct focus groups to
provide the exculpatory appearance of respect for user input, but of course their input will not
affect the WAASTE Requirements™. Completely free of charge, we will prioritize all WAASTE
Requirements™ based on our feelings at the time.

In recent years, pernicious new fads such as “Test-Driven Development” (TDD) have emerged,
threatening the very core of the WAASTE methodology. 18F Consulting is reacting by
developing our own alternative test restriction system, called Delay-Oriented Assessment
(DOA). Our methodology prevents duplicate effort by assiduously postponing testing until the
last possible moment. DOA permits testing only by entrusted QA experts, untainted by
knowledge of the project or its users.

To be completely WAASTE-ful, we limit communications to tightly defined narrow channels
through detailed memoranda, a process we call MemOnly (patent pending). In-person
interactions create the possibility that teams will deviate from the WAASTE Requirements™.
For maximum WAASTE, you control all communications. You get to specify your project in
excruciating detail. Eventually, your precise vision will be implemented. If the project is deemed
overbudget, past-deadline, and a total failure by end-users and higher-ups with unrealistic
expectations of working software, you can simply exhibit mountains of paperwork and walk
away.

We realize that others might promote “modern” software development practices such as set
forth in the “Agile Manifesto.” We at 18F Consulting are preparing our own comprehensive
response in a Waterfall PowerPoint Presentation, drawn from the outstanding track record of
success in Federal IT procurement. We expect it will be published any year now.

If you would like to make your next major project WAASTE-ful, please fax us a detailed
memorandum.

(Please note, the WAASTE methodology is proprietary to 18F Consulting, notwithstanding 17
U.S.C. § 105 or 18F’s Open Source Policy)

Happy 1st of April!