Waterfall can work great when: 1/ the focus is long-term both in terms of knowing that she company can take a few years to get the thing live but also that it will be around for many more years, 2/ the people writing the spec and the code are largely the same people.
Agile was really pushing to make sure companies could get software live before they died (number 1) and to remedy the anti-pattern that appeared with number 2 where non-technical business people would write the (half-assed) spec and then technical people would be expected do the monkey work of implementing it.
Agile was really pushing to make sure companies could get software live before they died (number 1) and to remedy the anti-pattern that appeared with number 2 where non-technical business people would write the (half-assed) spec and then technical people would be expected do the monkey work of implementing it.