Marcus Keenton
2 posts
Jul 20, 2026
12:56 AM
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Interviewer: "Can you walk me through the spiral methodology?"
Me, confidently: "Yes. It is a model. That spirals."
Ten years of shipping software and my brain chose that moment to delete everything except the shape. I could picture the diagram perfectly. The little quadrants. The line going around. Could I name a single phase? Absolutely not. I think I said "risk" four times with different intonations and hoped one of them counted as an answer.
The cruel part is that spiral is genuinely one of the more sensible models once you actually look at it. Plan, assess the risks, build, evaluate, repeat with a bigger budget each loop. It is basically what every mature team does anyway, just drawn as a hypnosis pattern.
After the interview I did the classic post-mortem panic googling and this explainer on the spiral methodology is what I wish I had read the night before. Four phases. There are four. I know them now. Ask me anything.
Did not get the job by the way. What is the SDLC question that has personally humbled you in an interview?
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