[UK-AL]

You haven't seen cargo cult until you've worked in an organisation with a pmo, and tranditional project management.

I had to literally write a 5 page business case for relatively small features that takes more than 5 days. You then had to get it approved by the pmo board. These people have no product management skills either.

Once it's a approved I have to write a full plan and schedule.

Companies like this exist.

This is what agile was a reaction to.

[klenwell]

I've seen 50-page project specs written before the dev team even new there was a new project. But PMO board. Ouch.

At the other extreme, you have your process-adverse adhocracy where your brilliant new lead developer unilaterally decides the first step in fixing the latest issue with your existing CRUD application written in PHP is to write a new Node framework.

Meanwhile, junior developers are getting bombarded directly by anyone in the organization who encounters a problem while using their keyboard.

Companies like this exist. Maybe not quite this extreme. But I've encountered a few variations on this theme and they've given me a deeper appreciation for agile concepts and terminology.

[dullgiulio]

The problem is that the companies that "went agile" just added some cargo cult practices they learned by some Agile consultant /in addition/ to the old practices you describe.

You know, I am sure many of those Agile consultants that big companies hire don't even know what the Agile Manifesto is.

Agile is not agile.

[Angostura]

This can actually be very useful as it insulates your dev team from some VP wandering across and demanding a pet feature be implemented. The VP has to negotiate the PMO board first

[UK-AL]

A product owner in agile can do exactly the same without the overhead.