Re:Agile projects have become waterfall projects with sprints
by plaguepilled on Thursday August 18, 2022 @04:14AM
(#32506769)
Estimates become deadlines because most managers don't understand the terms 'statistical variance' and 'sample size', not because the estimates are made. ;)
Entering a contract with a client based on an estimate without a large margin for error is a statistical failing, not a strategy one.
That said, I still think waterfall and other related variants are overwhelmingly the way to go. I've done both styles and the difference is night and day.
The common pattern I've seen is that everything is about estimates, which end up becoming deadlines. The management worry about them to the point of bloody-mindedness, at the neglect of gathering actual requirements from the customer. In my company, I work in a software department (I suppose we're an internal agency with just one customer). But, we can't speak directly to the customer and instead speak to another Project Manager (apparently because of "SaFE Enterprise Agile" policies), so we can't ask the customer what they truly need, and so the product isn't accurate, and neither are those estimates!