the thing that often gets lost in these discussions is that a software development process is mainly a method of communicating state to management. management d

the thing that often gets lost in these discussions is that a software development process is mainly a method of communicating state to management. management does need to know, despite developer complaints, because company resources need to be allocated and tracked. if developers can't figure how to let management get the information they need, then management will impose whatever they think is best, even if they have no particular way of figuring that out. the failure of agile is mainly a breakdown in this communication. the process itself works if it is followed, just as lighter and heavier processes can work. are they optimal? probably not, but communication amongst teams is a fairly difficult problem to optimize and it's likely to not have any one solution.