Successful projects using the Waterfall model?

Question

I'm trying to find information on projects which used the Waterfall software development model, and benefited from it. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anything. Does anyone know of anywhere I can read up on any piece of software, from any year, which used this method successfully?

Answer 1

The waterfall model is used a lot in military and space development.

Answer 2

Lots of big companies use it for internal projects but you won't find much published: failures are buried, strategic successes are proprietary and therefore kept close to the chest, and nobody cares about run-of-the-mill business process stuff.

Answer 3

Hard to dig up such information and most of it is biased by the publisher. I've read a paper by David Rico comparing the ROI of different methods, agile and non-agile (among which most can be categorized as waterfall). Maybe you can find some more data or stories in the comprehensive reference material that the paper is basing it's conclusions on.

Answer 4

I haven't been able to find many case studies available online, but a Google search listed several books that wight contain the case studies you're looking for.

This question may be being posed to the wrong audience. Most of the crowd here seems to be the leading edge crowd, meaning that most of us have already developed a bias against the waterfall method, and lean more toward Agile methods, Extreme programming, etc. The waterfall method is a nice framework but when it comes to the actual development, it has limitations that most developers find too constraining, and even those of use that use the waterfall methodology probably use it loosely, with a mix of Agile processes.

This might be a question better suited to a Project Management site.

I'm guessing based on the nature of the question that you may doubt that there are references. If I'm wrong, read no further, but if you are trying to justify not using a waterfall method, please read on.

Given the fact that so far, none of us have been able to point you to a good set of case studies might make you think "aha. I knew it.. There are no good case studies! The waterfall method is flawed/outdated, etc". I'd caution against that, because I've been involved with plenty of projects where the PM used the waterfall method. We just don't publish case studies on it. Remember that absence of proof is proof of absence.

*Edit - added *

As @DaveE said, you probably won't find much documented because it's just so commonplace. You won't find a lot of documentation on how to hammer in a nail, either.