AGILE IS DEAD. LIQUID IS HERE.

1970. 2001. 2022.
Three awakenings. Three shifts that redefined how we build.
1970: Winston Royce publishes a paper. The long-practiced waterfall model is now named, dissected, made real.
2001: The Agile Manifesto is born. A handful of developers put words to an approach that has been forming for years, and suddenly, everything shifts.
2022: ChatGPT arrives. AI, once the domain of researchers, foresight practitioners, and niche enthusiasts, takes center stage.
Change is like a burst dam; it happens in violent steps. Like water, you can channel it, but you can’t stop it. Harness this force and you can win. Ignore it, and you are forgotten.
So it is with the third shift—the third wave of digital innovation and creation.
After waterfall.
After agile.
Welcome to the Liquid Era.

The First Wave: Waterfall
Born from manufacturing, waterfall assumed perfect planning led to perfect execution. It worked—until software demanded speed. The world moved faster, and waterfall cracked.
The first wave was structure. The next wave? Adaptation.

The Second Wave: Agile
The world was moving faster. Software was eating the world, but waterfall couldn’t keep up.
Developers were stuck in a system designed for manufacturing, one that assumed perfect foresight and linear execution. But software isn’t a car. It isn’t a bridge. It’s alive. It changes. And it needed a process that could change with it.
Agile wasn’t invented in 2001—it was recognized. It rejected rigidity, embraced loops, and made innovation a repeatable process. Startups exploded. Speed became the advantage. But time kept accelerating.
For decades, Agile ruled. It made innovation a repeatable process, not a gamble.
But nothing stays dominant forever. The next shift was already forming.
The third wave wouldn’t just change how software was built. It would change who could build it.

The Third Wave: Liquid
Agile wasn’t an accident. It was a response. A rebellion against rigidity. A declaration that adaptability would win over control. And it did.
But the same forces that made Agile dominant also planted the seeds of its own disruption.
Technology never slowed down; it sped up.
Then came AI. ChatGPT made building conversational. We don’t just code—we describe. Vibe coding shifted the barrier from skill to clarity. Agile lowered the bar from capital to skill. Liquid lowers it from skill to trust.
Waterfall emphasized upfront requirements.
Agile emphasized iterative loops—learn, build, measure.
Liquid collapses learning and building so they now become one, emphasizing extremely fast continuous flow
A new model will emerge by today’s practitioners.
1. Trust & Distribution: When Anyone Can Build, Not Everyone Wins
The new challenge isn’t building software—it’s earning user trust and distributing products effectively. Anyone can create, but not everything will be adopted.

2. Relevancy
When anyone can build, when technology is no longer the differentiator, who you are—and how you resonate with your audience—becomes the moat. And great product sense—empathy, intuition, taste—matters more than ever. In a world of infinite products, only the relevant survive. Products don’t just have to work; they have to matter .

The Cambrian Explosion of Startups is here. Not just one-idea companies, but venture studios in disguise—rapidly launching, pivoting, and flowing toward what sticks.
Today, we often celebrate innovation in areas of low-hanging fruit. But what’s coming is a wave of breakthroughs in the hardest areas, with the most complex challenges—the problems that once seemed untouchable.
Relentless experimentation, sharp product intuition, and AI-powered iteration will define the next generation of builders.
Waterfall was structure.
Agile was iteration.
Liquid is flow.