After reading this blog post that suggests that the Death Star was an agile project I was wondering if using metaphors is a good way of describing methodologies in a slightly fun way.
'Movie x demonstrated agile because of a, b, c' - 'Movie y demonstrated waterfall because of f, g, h' - would this help clients understand what the concepts actually mean?
Absolutely, use whatever metaphor or tool you can to explain the difference.
You might find the following articles helpful:
Agile Mindset, Waterfall Mindset uses agile and waterfall as metaphors themselves.
What We Talk About When We Talk About Projects discusses the importance of creating "boundary objects" -linguistic tools or project artifacts to improve communication on projects.
waterfall is like artillery: a lot of setup, tons of prep work, massive amounts of ordinance, extremely precise aiming, difficulty hitting a moving target, and takes out a city block wherever it lands
agile is like a missile: arm, fire, aim...aim...aim...aim...aim...
Technical matter and business can easily be some kind of arid. And everything which can be useful to make things more understandable is good. Just be careful with metaphors: they can easily bring with them some false ideas.
Of course, the metaphor needs to be well fitted for the people you're aiming. For example, Star Wars is maybe not a good metaphor if you want to explain agile methods to the C level of your company...
Funny question.
I think of Matrix as Iterative, as The Architect mention that is the sixth version of the Matrix, so machines build in a iterative way.
Evan Almighty construction of the Noa´s Arc, is a good example of waterfall.
Of course. What area of thought or practice is not helped by metaphor? What after all is thought?
I suggest the movie "Rain Man". Tom Cruise for Agile, Dustin Hoffman for Waterfall.
