Agile isn't about predictability so much as it is about 1: ensuring productive work is always going on; 2: ensuring the thing that ships is what the client want

Agile isn't about predictability so much as it is about 1: ensuring productive work is always going on; 2: ensuring the thing that ships is what the client wants; and 3: ensuring that something functional will actually ship. Agile grew as a bulwark against the bad old ways of the "enterprise" trenches that led to the original "software crisis". There was a time when big software projects would not deliver, at all, as often as they would succeed. And even when they succeeded they often delivered the wrong thing. Daily builds, continuous integration, using the software itself as the source of truth (instead of elaborately negotiated specs), and focusing on iteration, these are how you can extract productivity from any team, and how you can keep on target and deliver something of value. It's not necessarily the best way, but it's one reasonably reliable way to get stuff done.