Information Technology Reference
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Figure 8.1: The waterfall methodology: information flows down. Unidirectional informa-
tion flows are the antithesis of DevOps.
It is impossible to understand the operational requirements of a system until at least the
design is complete, or in many cases until it is deployed and in active use. Therefore the
operational requirements cannot be taken into account in the requirements gathering stage,
after which the features are “locked.” Thus the result of this approach is that operational
requirements are not considered until it is too late to do anything about them.
In the waterfall method, system administrators are involved only in deploying the soft-
ware,andthereafteraresolelyresponsibleforoperationsandmeetinguptimerequirements.
System administrators have very little chance of influencing the development of the soft-
waretobettermeettheirneeds.Inmanycasestheyhavenodirectcontactwiththesoftware
developers.
Companies that have a business model based on the web, or a significant web presence,
develop their own custom software. Traditionally there was very little interaction between
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