Waterfall is more like: You want to go to Mars. You start to build the rocket. Managers that don't know anything about building a rocket starts having meetings to tell the engineers who do know how to build a rocket what they should be doing. Management decides to launch the rocket based on a timeline that's not based in reality. Management tries to launch the rocket based on the timeline instead of when it's actually finished. Rocket explodes. Management blames the engineers.
The various methodologies don't actually change what the engineers need to do. But some of them can be effective at requiring more effort from management to interfere in the project. Bad managers are lazy so they're not going to write a card, so they can be somewhat effective in neutralizing micromanagement. I say somewhat, because bad management will eventually find a way to screw things up.
