The Boeing 777: no Chainsaw Massacres, please!

Iterative life cycle models have become popular in software engineering, e.g. in agile development. In contrast, the waterfall model appears to prevail in manufacturing engineering disciplines. This includes aircraft engineering and Boeing’s project for developing its most recent passenger aircraft, the 777. The paper walks through the phases of the 777’s development and compares this process to iterative development. The comparison suggests two observations: Firstly, the over-all waterfall approach in the 777 project appears to be well-motivated by the physical, manufactured nature of aircraft components such as wings, in addition to safety concerns. Secondly, several iterative elements in the development of the 777 can also be identified. A major source of these is digitalization of development, in particular the use of CAD tools for a process called digital preassembly.