[sgt101]

My current problem : customers who don't want to participate in the agile process and do want to have a "simple" pre-agreed specification to use to determine project success/failure. Of course they can't write such a spec and want me to do it - and of course I can't without doing large parts of the work to implement it (because if I'm wrong I'm on the hook for a large sum of money wasted).

[kthejoker2]

Why can't they write it? Conduct a user story workshop, slice out an MVP release, and that's your "spec."

You can't force customers to "get" Agile. You can force them to understand the risks of not participating in the process.

[sgt101]

>Why can't they write it? Conduct a user story workshop, slice out an MVP release, and that's your "spec."

Well - yes, this (variations) is what we do, but guess what the outcome is.... "I'm not convinced that we've got this right...", "I was never fully signed up to that...", "I think we have invested a lot of effort in a process that isn't generating business value..."

The problem with Agile is that it doesn't account for politics, if people play nice and are all signed up to get the best done with the tools and people available it's brilliant. If you've got to deal with corporate politics it leaves those with good intent exposed in 100's of ways.