It sound to me like a tightly prescribed strategy of gathering relevant user information. Sounds like short iterations in market research.

It doesn't sound like it makes any mention of software engineering.

All the other kinds of capital-E Engineers sit around making blueprints all day. Unless your definition of "software engineering" doesn't rely on the noun "engineering", then the fact that making blueprints "never worked" means that Software Engineering is Dead.

"All the other kinds of capital-E Engineers sit around making blueprints all day."

[citation needed]

This debate comes up periodically, and in some forums we are lucky enough to have engineers from other disciplines pop up, who comment to the effect that they do rather more experimentation and software-like development than computer programmers often realize. The "big" projects that we associate with blueprints are rather small by percentage of projects done, and even they require a certain amount of flexibility to handle changes discovered during the course of the build ("oh, crap, this bedrock is actually sand!").

Mind you, the previous paragraph is also [citation needed], but my real point is and remains to call for actual experience and knowledge and not just regurgitations of stereotypes.

(I know a number of engineers in my circle of family and friends, and none of them actually work in anything like the "Waterfall" model, only with blueprints. The closest is the one who is in charge of designing racecars, and they still do experimental designs in computers, and before computers, did experimental builds of cars.)

I think engineering in other fields works with blueprints, because there are so many clear-cut expectations/requirements. No matter how fancy the design, the over-all purpose of a building is to shield one area (the "inside") from another (the "outside"). Doors and windows open and close, optionally locks. Heating and cooling must be scaled the to size of the area covered.. etc.etc.

Designing a building is much more akin to configuring a server (which anyone here is perfectly comfortable doing by blueprint) than developing an application.

The level of detail usually required in a software-blueprint would amount to including the placement of pencils on every desk in the building-blueprint.

Chemical engineers? I mean if you define: Engineering == blueprints that's fine, but it's an awfully narrow definition.