In a perfect world, this advice is absolutely true (and I've been guilty of it more than once). In reality, here's my experience: - poor specifications from the start, with moving targets in the middle - nobody available or willing to give definitive answers - management stuck in endless meeting loops rather than having time to look at what engineers are actually doing - engineering team (often severely) understaffed and dealing with multiple projects each - not time, patience or mental capacity to dive into what everyone else is doing -> result: crazy amounts of wasted time for everyone

This, as so often, is a result of lack of time, patience and _planning_. It feels like "Agile" has become a convenient excuse to just start and figure out what it is we're building as we go along...