Tarmo Toikkanen has an interesting speculation about Why people still believe in the Waterfall model, putting the blame on the Royce paper that was trying to say that waterfall was not the way to do software development.
OK, so why do people still advocate the waterfall? If you look at the scientific articles on software engineering that discuss the waterfall, they all cite Royce’s article. In other words, they’re saying something like “The waterfall is a proven method (Royce, 1970).” So they base their claims on an article that actually says the opposite: that the model does not work.
Tarmo was not the first to run across this idea, but the interpretation of the problem is different.
Don’t draw figures or diagrams of wrong models, because people will remember them. And in the worst case that could cause hundreds of thousands of failed projects and billions of euros and dollars wasted for nothing.
Other people has written about The Waterfall Accident and Waterfall Model; not what was intended.