Great post, Harold. I'm a programmer, and my first job was building business learning simulations at a consulting company (SMG Inc, Philadelphia, now a subsidiary of ) which was completely Waterfall-oriented.

Not only does Waterfall result in projects that are obsolete by the time they are done, it is a recipe for tension between the clients and the consultants. It all comes from the developers trying to lock down the specifications and make it as costly as possible to change anything. I'm looking into Agile project methods in my current job, and I can't wait to try a new approach to that area.

@ Gilbert, the function of Instructional Design doesn't go away in Agile methods. It just becomes one role of the development team, and it contributes the ID perspective incrementally along the way instead of all up front.