What are the main differences between waterfall and fountain models?

Hallo jplhix,

the fountain model is basically an improvement on the waterfall model.
There are basically the same steps to observe as in the waterfall
model (listed in the additional sources section), the main difference
is that in the fountain model you can still take a step back to a
previous point on the list (taking into account that sequences may
always contain cycles).

Obvious advantages because of this differences are:

1. You don't have to freeze the requirements too soon.
2. There are more interactions between design and requirements steps.
3. The coding can be started earlier.

I hope this answer is helpfull. If you require additional informaiton
or some part of the answer is not clear enough, don't hesitate to
request a clarification.

voyager-ga

Additional Sources

Illustration of the waterfall model
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jonmc/CSE2305/Topics/07.13.SWEng1/html/text.html#traditional_waterfall_model

Illustration of the fountain model
http://www-staff.mcs.uts.edu.au/~cotar/moses.fountain.html

ERUPT: pragmatic software development lifecycle
http://members.dodo.net.au/~void/old/erupt.htm

QuickStudy: System Development Life Cycle
http://www.computerworld.com/developmenttopics/development/story/0,10801,71151,00.html

Search Strategy

waterfall fountain model
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=waterfall+fountain+model

waterfall fountain comparison  object
://www.google.com/search?q=waterfall+fountain+comparison++object&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=0&sa=N

Very good! Thanks!