[binspace]

Actually, agile methodologies are good for situations where the problem itself (and even customer base) is in flux and not fully known (ie consumer facing web startups). Agile methodologies help lay a roadmap to facilitate communication and prioritization to/from developer, project management, and the customer(s).

The solution may or may not be difficult, but finding the right problem to solve is paramount.

The quality of the solution is often a product of the quality of the people working on the problem. Oh, and don't run out of money :-)

[astrodust]

My experience is there's a tendency to ship the first viable thing that comes out and deal with the rest on an as-needed basis. This is fine for stuff that can survive being a bit ramshackle at first if you can refactor it later, but some things are highly resistant to later refactoring.

[binspace]

Shipping quickly is often a strategy used to discover the problem space. Some things should be done as quickly as possible and some things should not. The developers/tech management are responsible for forseeing such cases.

Hopefully the initial developers are good ones. If not, I'm sorry and I hope they pay you well. I've been there :-|