And that attitude describes exactly why Agile projects fail and have massive cost overruns and are late, because, surprisingly, there are more similarities between building bridges and building software than most suspect. Change costs money and time, and a change in a fundamental core component, can have outsized effects on everything else, including instability and poor performance, which can be overlooked during the Agile development process. I personally witnessed such a project where a component was designed and built, passed all its tests, but once it was to a point it could be connected to the other portions of the system, it failed miserably and the next 12 months was spent "fixing" it, which really never got to the point it needed to because every fix led to the discovery of a new problem.

The blueprints is the requirements and planning stage, with API definitions. This does involve iterations. Coding is the building process, where checks (testing) validate the components before the next layer is added.

I design and build a data store, complete with an API in between. (the Foundation) It was designed with certain requirements in mind, because performance is a key metric I'm going to be measured on when it's done. Some Agile moron comes along 6 months later, and decides that he needs to filter with permissions in a new way that the DB was not designed for which works with today's traffic. Ideally this change requires a new foundation, because now, instead of an arch bridge, we're building a suspension bridge. The foundation requirements changed, and if we were doing it right, we'd tear everything down, but in the agile world we just slap some extra code (mortar) on the foundation, and voila, it runs/stands. Then traffic doubles, and the bridge fails.

You will pay the piper, sooner or later. Agile advocates later, which is why it's so popular with business types. That's fine if you never plan on being anywhere longer than a year or two, and don't really care what happens after that.

My last 2 sentences are how I run projects. It's not Agile in any way, although Agile did claim some of those features as its own, eventually. Do recall Agile, when it started, promoted XP, essentially code for how to take 2 developers and quarter their output. It's gone through several redefinitions since then, and just because it touts some ideas I've been following for years prior to Agile's conception doesn't mean those ideas are "Agile".

Considering I've seen US Fed gov software development contracts pre-Agile and still think Agile is crap, I guess that proves you wrong. Granted, waterfall isn't great either, but therein lies another fallacy, for Agile people, it's waterfall or Agile, for everyone else, there common sense project planning which is in between those two.

What you're describing is not listed in the Agile manifesto, and certainly not in the first few years of Agile crap. This is progressive project planning, and it existed decades prior to the Agile plague.

That's utter crap, and you know it if you're any good at all. You have no way to measure it that accurately unless you're doing cookie-cutter code where the next 10% of features are just as hard as the previous 10%.

Why weren't you 100% on target? After all, you updated estimates as you went. The better question is how close were you to the original estimate with allowances for the major changes along the way? I've been within 10% on a number of projects I was in control of. With a specific Agile project being run by a PM, a BA, and 2 stake holders we were about 500% off. Notice a problem there? Not a single technical person. Because Agile told them you didn't need a technical person running the project, and that costs would be contained, because, well, they were using Agile. They even had their Agile certificates hanging on the wall.

If I need a round peg....

So your version of Agile is create mini projects? Because no where does Agile say that mini-projects are part of the process. (One of the many failings of Agile is that no where does it really say anything meaningful) What you're describing is project planning, not Agile.

Um, no, this only happens in organizations that are small enough that everyone's involved in 1 project. In the real world, I may have 100+ people working on a large project. There's no way everyone involved with all aspects are part of all teams. All they'd do all day is meetings, which, btw, is another one of the major failings of Agile, it leads to meeting paralysis.

That's a nice fairy tale.

Agile is pretty much crap. You don't build a bridge that way, nor any other project, except maybe landscaping. If you have enough to sketch out a plan, you have enough to plan. You can't build something if you don't know what your target is.

When I have one of those... I just say - well, if it should stay the same, why don't we just change that one line back. There's no difference according to you.

Or a District 9 sequel.

I'd rather go to a roll my own model for everyone. I do it now....

This is incorrect at this point, I'd say it's more like a postcard pinned to a bulletin board in the hallway, with everyone passing being required to take whatever cards are going to where they are going, with the requirement that multiple copies be made and dropped at every corner on the trek. That's probably more accurate as an analogy of today's email situation. The implication being, obviously, that email is visible to everyone on the trip, and copies are made and kept.

As for the rest, there are ways around a lot of that, but we're not there yet. Your analysis of webmail is spot on, webmail as it lives today should die a very very quick death. The sooner, the better.

While normally I'd say no, in this case, the only way this judge will see the light is to personally experience just exactly what it means to be hacked. He's already demonstrated a total lack of understanding with actual evidence thrown in front of him, so maybe the experience will enlighten him. Would his position be the same with the meth-addicted gun toting neighbor that shoots randomly into the neighborhood yesterday, that he's not an imminent threat today.... some people are just idiots.

And yet you post as AC.....

It already happened to Sony, recall the CD rootkit incident? That was even more evil, as it wasn't just malware, but an actual attack. Sony's still around but they seem to be having some financial trouble of late or something. Karma sure can be a bitch.