This isn't about big design up front vs. "Agile". In my personal opinion if anything is a failure it's Agile which has turned into an excuse for pushing people

This isn't about big design up front vs. "Agile". In my personal opinion if anything is a failure it's Agile which has turned into an excuse for pushing people around, poor management, poor software development. You have to keep your eye on the ball, know where it's going and be flexible. You can't just be flexible. You can't build anything of consequence by only planning a few weeks ahead out of context of some larger plan. If you have no idea where you're going you're going to mess it up a few weeks at a time. JMHO and I've done everything under the sun from various flavours of Scrum, XP, to more traditional project management techniques. This question will help you find out if you're going into a chaotic and stressful environment or if things are under some sort of adult supervision...