Personally I’ve never seen this and have worked for a few megacorps. Never worked in finance/banking though, perhaps this is common there. Perhaps I’ve just been lucky/unlucky? How common is this?
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He goes on to blame agile for all this inefficiency, but being old enough to have worked proper waterfall, I can assure you that task bloating is extreme under such a process. That was the one period of my life that matches some of the things mentioned here.
The root problem seems to be estimate bloat due to uncertainty. You can’t actually commit to a far off end date unless you know the amount of work (impossible) or include significant “buffer”. Agile should allow you to pack in more features if you are ahead, but apparently that’s not working out at the places he’s worked.
[edit] He goes on to blame agile for all this inefficiency, but being old enough to have worked proper waterfall, I can assure you that task bloating is extreme under such a process. That was the one period of my life that matches some of the things mentioned here.
The root problem seems to be estimate bloat due to uncertainty. You can’t actually commit to a far off end date unless you know the amount of work (impossible) or include significant “buffer”. Agile should allow you to pack in more features if you are ahead, but apparently that’s not working out at the places he’s worked.