Iterative development is definitely a bunch of small waterfalls. I know when I’m writing about waterfall, I’m referring to teams that complete the entire project without customer feedback.

I think it was Alistair Cockburn who made the comment that agile didn’t invent anything new, they just repackaged the best of what they found already out there.

And yet, this is precisely the same implementation as a multi-generational project plan (MGPP) that includes quality functional deployment (QFD). And incidentally, there is no alternative to the “waterfall” approach, and I am tired of hearing claims to the contrary. When you implement an SLDC in phases, you are still doing the same requirements-design-code steps. You just happen to be piping the water back up the waterfall a few times.

Maybe we need to start calling it the “Splash Mountain” approach.

I believe this comparison distorts and almost parodies XP.

While it is true that XP embraces changing requirements, it includes an initial planning phase that defines:

1. A tentative overall set of user stories.
2. A release plan specifying which user stories to implement for each system release.

Thus the statement you attributed to FDD applies to XP:

“XP defines the overall scope of the project at the beginning, but does not define the details.”

Development processes generally lie on a continuum that ranges from waterfall to XP. I view XP as the most extreme of agile processes. But none of the processes – including XP – completely throws out planning and requirements.

Advocates of XP rightly argue that opponents have distorted XP.

See http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/commit.html for more info.