Difference between waterfall model and Spiral model?

There are many nicety and microscopic points to be taking into consideration while coding in software industry. From the thought of a project to hours spent on the coding, to the final product there is always a systematic way of doing it. One should always follow those system while coding.


Software development not only restricts to writing codes and developing software alone. It also includes maintaining the software and repairing the faults when the user faces it. There are two kinds of model in maintaining the software. One is waterfall model and other is spiral model.

Waterfall model was originally published by Winston W. Royce in 1970. Initially it was considered as a non-working model. But because of water model’s easy approach towards software development and maintenance it got popularity in software industry.

Spiral model was developed to overcome the disadvantages of waterfall model. This is also called Boehm’s model. There are 4 stages in spiral model, Planning, Evaluation, Risk analysis and engineering.

Now let us see the difference between the waterfall model and spiral model.

1. In spiral model the customer or the businessman is aware of all the process from day one to the end, during the software product development. But in waterfall model the customer is not involved in any of the developing stages.

2.In waterfall model, there is no going back to the previous stage of coding. It is really a drawback because some ideas or codes seem to be possible on paper, but not while implementing it. While in spiral model one can alter the coding of previous stage. One can revisit the previous stage as many times as required in spiral model and can change or improve their coding accordingly.

3. Spiral model is considered as complex model. And often there is no documentation in spiral model which makes it difficult to track the whole process. But as the waterfall model has smooth and consecutive development with documentation, it is easy to track the whole development.

Both have advantages and disadvantages. It is up to the developer and the size of the project to choose the appropriate model.

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