Everyone in the Agile Development world has their favorite set of slides comparing Agile and Waterfall development. Here’s my latest favorite:

I really appreciate the non-combative tone (and eye-candylicious design). Despite TPL being firmly in the Agile camp, there are definitely situations where waterfall applies better. As developers, though, those situations (hands-off stakeholders, lock-step documentation required by law) aren’t really our cup of tea anyway.

The hybrid approach they discuss at the end is actually baked into most Agile projects already. Most projects kick off with an “Iteration 0″…technically this iteration is “for” setting up the technical & management structures for the project, but every iteration 0 I’ve seen has included a broad, high level effort to build your initial backlog. Some up front design is always required, but using Agile forces you to timebox it and get started :)