Difference Between Waterfall vs Spiral and Incremental Model

To manage the level of complexity during the software development cycle, various SDLC model is implemented by the software companies.

Their aim is to deliver a quality software product, however each model is unique in terms of their software development approach. To effectively learn the SDLC models we will compare the various models of Software Engineering.

Here we will see how each model differs from other in terms of cost, time duration, requirements, maintenance etc.

Waterfall vs. Incremental vs. Spiral vs. Rad Model: Comparison of Various SDLC Models

The following SDLC models comparison table presents the differences between Water-Fall Model Vs. Incremental Model Vs. Spiral Model and Rad Model.

Properties of Model	Water-Fall Model	Incremental Model	Spiral Model	Rad Model
Planning in early stage	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Returning to an earlier phase	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Handle Large-Project	Not Appropriate	Not Appropriate	Appropriate	Not Appropriate
Detailed Documentation	Necessary	Yes but not much	Yes	Limited
Cost	Low	Low	Expensive	Low
Requirement Specifications	Beginning	Beginning	Beginning	Time boxed release
Flexibility to change	Difficult	Easy	Easy	Easy
User Involvement	Only at beginning	Intermediate	High	Only at the beginning
Maintenance	Least	Promotes Maintainability	Typical	Easily Maintained
Duration	Long	Very long	Long	Short
Risk Involvement	High	Low	Medium to high risk	Low
Framework Type	Linear	Linear + Iterative	Linear + Iterative	Linear
Testing	After completion of coding phase	After every iteration	At the end of the engineering phase	After completion of coding
Overlapping Phases	No	Yes (As parallel development is there)	No	Yes
Maintenance	Least Maintainable	Maintainable	Yes	Easily Maintainable
Re-usability	Least possible	To some extent	To some extent	Yes
Time-Frame	Very Long	Long	Long	Short
Working software availability	At the end of the life-cycle	At the end of every iteration	At the end of every iteration	At the end of the life cycle
Objective	High Assurance	Rapid Development	High Assurance	Rapid development
Team size	Large Team	Not Large Team	Large Team	Small Team
Customer control over administrator	Very Low	Yes	Yes	Yes