> And here we go with an entire thread of cynical comments where people assume that the jacked-up Agile implementations they've seen at their own organizations

> And here we go with an entire thread of cynical comments where people assume that the jacked-up Agile implementations they've seen at their own organizations are the only way it ever can be implemented . . . Probably one of the most agile projects ever was Windows 95. They started by building prototypes of the UI elements they wanted to implement in frickin' Visual Basic, putting them in front of end users, gathering feedback and iterating the next set of UI prototypes, till they converged on the design with the start menu, taskbar, and desktop. About the only thing missing was CI/CD. But that was Microsoft at the peak of their powers. They had enormous resources and top-tier talent. And they had bet the company on Windows 95; if it flopped, it would be a disaster. It is very, very hard to have the stars align just right, to put together a team that cared enough about the product to actually do this sort of development rather than cargo-cult it to check off some process compliance checkbox. Yes, I know Windows 95 was a buggy mess. Given the constraints Microsoft was operating under, it's a miracle it worked at all.