> Some of the most frequently-mentioned problems with Agile are: Agile ignores technical debt; This isn't a problem with Agile. This is a problem with the mana

> Some of the most frequently-mentioned problems with Agile are: Agile ignores technical debt; This isn't a problem with Agile. This is a problem with the management in your organization. I worked at an org that implemented Agile into 5 sprints. Sprints 1-4 were focused on the business work - things that deliver value to the organization. Sprint 5 was an "IT" sprint, where the developers owned the priorities and had time to fix things like technical debt. This worked pretty well. > frameworks like Scrum are just “red tape, Yes, companies need their people to operate in a predictable way. This isn't the wild west - you need to be accountable to the people you report to. These "red tape" processes are just regular checkpoints with various people in the org to make sure everyone is on the same page. Waterfall had this too, except the checkpoints were every 1 - 3 months. I think the bigger problem is that some software developers don't want to be accountable to people. They just want to do their own thing, like Joel Spolsky recommends with his staff at StackOverflow. It can work great, in the right environment. But the vast majority of companies do not operate this way. > programmers are asked to commit to arbitrary estimates and deadlines This has been as old as software itself. I've been on a waterfall project which had "things that needed to be done" and those things had zero detail in them. Yet I was asked to come up with a "ballpark estimate" by my PM. When I had zero idea what it was about, who it would interact with, etc. > never get the time to think thoroughly about the features they’re creating. So add a Spike and give it a two week estimate so you have the time to do whatever thinking / analysis you need to do to come up with a solid plan. Spikes exist for a reason - not everything on the backlog needs to be a feature.