"Agile" is very popular for upcoming next gen tech projects in the intelligence community partly because budgets are so erratic and progress is much more scruti

"Agile" is very popular for upcoming next gen tech projects in the intelligence community partly because budgets are so erratic and progress is much more scrutinized than before (sequester may be over technically but you wouldn't think so if you look for job listings in the DC area). The problem is that even that process is not unaffected by the waterfall and spiral externalities of who these projects must ultimately answer to and (much more importantly) receive headcount and budget from to accomplish a goal. I'm familiar with one project where iterations / sprints took about 2 months each. Comparing this to the precedent of top 50 enterprise size orgs taking half a year to deploy one... or one thousand physical servers due to sheer bureaucracy in the name of checks and balances... well we should not be trying to compare ourselves to the worst to just make ourselves feel better. It's not like low morale is the primary reason for low performance in enterprise work for so long.