Oh, where to start with this one... * No agile method stops you from doing a bit of design thinking before you code, when it is needed. Agile is against Big De

Oh, where to start with this one... * No agile method stops you from doing a bit of design thinking before you code, when it is needed. Agile is against Big Design Up Front as a matter of course because it so often fails to be good design, or appropriate for what the business ends up wanting. * Lots of automated tests done while coding that allows you to think sooner and better about your code. decreasing the need for big design up front, and better suiting the design to what you actually find your needs to be. Not thinking beforehand is a risk for sure, but producing a big, inflexible, unsuitable design is another risk. I've seen it, you may have too. Thinking without testing the thoughts in code is bad too. * "Tests after the fact" refers to QA. Agile also emphasises unit tests before and during the fact. "Tests after the fact don't do enough to lower the number of bugs" is something that any agilist would agree with, but would recognise as an argument for agile. * Rapid release to QA allows actual users/sysops to see where you're going much earlier, hence mitigating major risk of building the wrong thing/right thing but not scalable/performant enough/etc.