Open source · under development
Waterfall is open-source software to cost and control long-running projects with earned value management. It links the schedule, the estimate, the risk provisions and the actual costs, from building the offer to the last project review.
Specification published, product under construction: see the roadmap or the GitHub repository.
One project, two phases
Waterfall is designed for projects that last ten years, sometimes fifteen: the offer is negotiated for months, the baseline moves only by contract, and years later you must still be able to say whether you are where you said you would be.
Structure the schedule, cost labour, supplies and subcontracting, assess the risks. Each version submitted to the client becomes a revision that keeps its assumptions and its rates.
At each review, re-estimate the estimate to complete, update the schedule and the risks, import the actual costs from the ERP. The earned value indicators are recomputed against the baseline budget.
Earned value management
Earned value management (EVM) compares, at the same date, what should have been done, what has been done and what it cost. Standardised and proven in defence and aerospace, it remains rare elsewhere, for lack of tools that bring schedule, budget and actual costs together. Waterfall is designed around it: a completed task earns its budgeted amount, no percentage is ever typed in, and the indices are recomputed at every review.
Earned value, with a worked exampleComputed per sub-project, dated at every revision, aggregated by sums across the portfolio.
What sets Waterfall apart
Each principle answers a common flaw in cost tracking tools: the one that quietly makes them optimistic.
A task carries its estimate lines: the schedule and the costing are the same tree, seen from the side of time or of money.
Read the principle → 02Every offer and every review is frozen with its rates and calendars, and stays recomputable years later.
Read the principle → 03A budgeted amount that only a contract amendment moves, a re-estimated amount updated at every review: the baseline does not drift silently.
Read the principle → 04A risk is costed like an estimate. Its provision weighs on the forecast, never on the baseline budget.
Read the principle → 05A completed task earns its value. No percentage is entered: progress is not up for debate.
Read the principle → 06MS Project schedules, estimates and estimates to complete in Excel, actual costs from the ERP: file exchanges that can be replayed.
Read the principle →Across the organisation
Portfolio views sum project data to inform decisions on workload, costs and risks. A portfolio index there is a ratio of sums, never an average of indices: a fifty-thousand-euro contract does not weigh as much as a million-euro one.
Portfolio controlConsolidated, read-only views that can be computed at a past date.
A clear scope
The platform centralises project control data and computes the indicators. It sits alongside the ERP, MS Project and Excel, without taking their place or imposing an internal process.
Schedule, costing, revisions, risks and provisions, estimate to complete, import of actual costs, project and portfolio indicators.
Schedules are exchanged with MS Project in XML format; estimates, estimates to complete and actual costs go through Excel. No direct connection to the ERP. The exchanges in detail.
No accounting, no purchasing, no sale price or margin, no day-to-day task tracking per person: it is not a tool like Jira or OpenProject.
Where the project stands
The specification holds more than two hundred requirements, each with its rationale and its verification criterion. The API contract and a mockup of the interface are published. The service is now being built, epic by epic, and an online demo will open to testers as soon as accounts and access rights (EP-03) are delivered. Become a tester.
The full roadmap
EP-01Development foundationdeliveredEP-02Front-end mockup on a simulated contractdeliveredEP-03Accounts, authentication and permissionsin progressEP-05…Reference data, projects, schedule, costing, indicatorsupcomingJoin the project
Waterfall is built in public. Testers, project managers, cost controllers, developers: every piece of feedback counts, from a remark on the specification to testing a screen.
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