Such a great point. I think one way to go about it is to just put the Agile bits inside a Waterfall. Which is frankly how it works anyhow. You can characteri

Such a great point. I think one way to go about it is to just put the Agile bits inside a Waterfall. Which is frankly how it works anyhow. You can characterize early sprints at 'research'. Later the sprints are just 'sub projects'. I think people could be convinced that 'feature refinement' is a real thing. Put it out in the field, doesn't work the way we want it, and so it needs to be refined. I know that I would hide 'Agile' to anyone outside the team and just talk in simple, easier to understand phases. It's also possible to put checklists in those phases, and if you say someting like '75% features' at such and such phase and assume '25% of that 75% will be reworked' it's not irrational either. But you are right, culture matters.