Breakdown of projects into sequential phases, where each phase depends on the previous one
The waterfall model is the process of performing the typical software development life cycle (SDLC) phases in sequential order. Each phase is completed before the next is started, and the result of each phase drives subsequent phases. Compared to alternative SDLC methodologies such as Agile, it is among the least iterative and flexible, as progress flows largely in one direction (like a waterfall) through the phases of conception, requirements analysis, design, construction, testing, deployment, and maintenance.
The waterfall model is the earliest SDLC methodology.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).