🐞 QA Stands For Quality p.6 - Let's Talk Sequential Development Models
Waterfall, V-Model, What Are They All About And If They Still Matter
Hey friends 👋
Welcome to the next issue of this QA series, where I share the information that helped me become a QA and that I picked up over the years to climb from a Trainee QA to managing an entire department, and that I used to teach as a course on how to become a QA from scratch.
We are finally getting to the interesting (and maybe somewhat boring) parts of the course, but if you are starting from scratch, you need to understand how the proverbial sausage is being made. So, today, we are talking about all those different development pipelines and what they are about.
Alright, let’s get into it.
1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣ Sequential Models
I won’t bore you with many interesting historical details; books about QA do it far better than I. However, let’s just say that sequential development models have been around as long as software itself, and even a little longer. Some of them are even still applicable in certain industries.
These models prioritise upfront clarity — teams define the destination early and follow the plan without turning back. Changes later in the process are costly and disruptive.
The biggest ones were always Waterfall and V-Model.
💡 Pro Tip: when I was looking for a Junior QA position, it’s been quite common to as what kind of software is still being developed using sequential models. The right answer is usually in ares that require a lot of precision and where the cost of error may result in either loss of human life or huge financial losses. So, big banking software, medical, military, space were always a good answer.
