[fwlr]

“It works when engineers and management are both highly skilled” is hardly a glowing recommendation for a management process. Only a management system so bad that it is tantamount to sabotage would not work when everyone involved is highly skilled. The most productive management system I ever operated under was “the founder DMs ‘how’s it going’ whenever he remembers to” and that worked great because we were all skilled too.

One can imagine a 2x2 grid like so:

        good mgmt    bad mgmt

  good   anything     eng is 
   eng     works        sad

   bad    mgmt is     nothing
   eng      sad        works

Particular management styles don’t really matter in the top left or bottom right square. The most salient criticism of Agile from this perspective is that in the top right square it multiplies bad management’s capacity to make good engineering sad.

[donio]

How would you end up with good mgmt and bad eng? I suppose it could happen as a temporary situation when new mgmt takes over a failing organization.

[fwlr]

If engineers are making the hiring decisions, as was the trend for a while, and they make bad hiring decisions. Or if the hiring department is bad. Or if managers are good at managing but bad at hiring. Lots of ways, hiring is hard.

[pg_1234]

... with a small budget.