[Sigia-l] Don't go chasing waterfalls?

[andrew at friendlymanual.com]

Hi Folks,

I'm trying to figure out if real-world IA is more linear or iterative, and would
be grateful for your thoughts. It is linear in the sense that we are - we are
born, we die, and there is some stuff in between. That is, we start working on
a project/site/design, we finish working on a project/site/design, and we do
some stuff in between (granted this may be more an outie than an innie thing).

I've read "waterfall development" models of IA (we gather, we analyse, we
design, we deliver the design) and they don't seem to reflect any kind of
real-world project that I've been involved with. It seems to be more
iterative/non-linear - the requirements change so the goalposts move, other
projects intrude, the IA team spends time fronting/evangelising the project to
stakeholders, the stakeholders love the interaction so they lobby to change the
requirements, the design changes to accomodate, the technical specialists say
that the project can't deliver what the design promises, the design changes.
Real life is linear, perhaps real-life IA isn't? In a perfect vacuum the design
requirements would never change. Hmm.

Cheers, Andrew

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