It used to be common practice to have a lengthy, and expensive, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Large teams were assembled. Meetings were scheduled and discussions had, ad nauseam. Requirements were gathered and documents were created which consumed reams of paper that would fill the filing cabinets of each and every team member. A design for the system would often be democratically assembled and a plan laid out for the system.

Once management and/or executive teams were satisfied, development could start. This long and cumbersome process often meant that budgets had already been significantly depleted with the cost of everyone’s time in the planning stages. If for some reason, a flaw in the design was discovered during the development cycle, change orders and a slew of meetings would often occur.

Should the requirements change due to a change in markets or other external conditions it could potentially derail an entire program. If the SDLC did not allow for quick adaptation to change and rapid course correction, it would often spell doom for the entire project. Worse, if the change were significant enough it could render the need for the application obsolete.

Unfortunately, developing software in this manner was quite costly and would end in failure more often than success. The cost of change was too great and the resulting disruption was often detrimental to the process. These days software projects are more likely to be developed in some sort of Agile fashion.