[samsquire]

I think engineering effectiveness comes down to a people and communication problem.

Writing software well is difficult by itself and people are all different in understanding, experience and skill level. Throwing a group of people together and trying to build something that works for every scenario is a miracle given the complexity of software and the complexity of interpersonal relationships and organisations (see Conway's law). I'm impressed by every multiplatform language or tool or software. It's a lot of work!

If everybody did things the same way i.e the agile way and if agile was proven to work and everyone followed it the way it was intended and designed, then maybe we could all be interoperable and easily work together and produce projects that don't fail. That's the fantasy.

To be fair I've been 6 years worth of agile projects and I was never on a project that failed.