I like Agile methodologies, although I recognize that they are not suitable for all type of projects. But on this case, the problem is not the supposed methodology used. The UK government (well, that goes for every government) has failed big projects with different methodologies (waterfall, prince2,...) The problem resides on the companies used and the view of the bureaucracy that they need to cover their asses.
Once thing that peeves me is that the are people, even here, thinking that programmers are code monkeys. Your analogy with building is absolutely wrong. The programmers are not the workers that do the actual build. That is the job or your make, msbuild or ant. Compared with actual building, construction on a software project is infinitely cheaper. The programmers are the building architects, your tests (be either unit, integration, system or what not) are the formulas used by architects to calculate that the distribution of strength allows the building to stay upright. Every analyst, project architect or project manager on top, is just additional bureaucracy. Especially the ones that have done no coding at all and think that the system they have designed is the 8th wonder of the world. I don't think anyone will ask someone that doesn't know the steel coefficient of elasticity or its strength properties to design the next skyscrapper.
Finally, to answer to someone over here, in software development you can start designing first a "hut", and then, as you advance in the project you can refactor, add or delete code (which is just an architectural plan) to support a bigger system (first a two story house, then a 10-story building, then your skyscrapper)
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I like Agile methodologies, although I recognize that they are not suitable for all type of projects. But on this case, the problem is not the supposed methodology used. The UK government (well, that goes for every government) has failed big projects with different methodologies (waterfall, prince2, ...) The problem resides on the companies used and the view of the bureaucracy that they need to cover their asses.
Once thing that peeves me is that the are people, even here, thinking that programmers are code monkeys. Your analogy with building is absolutely wrong. The programmers are not the workers that do the actual build. That is the job or your make, msbuild or ant. Compared with actual building, construction on a software project is infinitely cheaper. The programmers are the building architects, your tests (be either unit, integration, system or what not) are the formulas used by architects to calculate that the distribution of strength allows the building to stay upright. Every analyst, project architect or project manager on top, is just additional bureaucracy. Especially the ones that have done no coding at all and think that the system they have designed is the 8th wonder of the world. I don't think anyone will ask someone that doesn't know the steel coefficient of elasticity or its strength properties to design the next skyscrapper.
Finally, to answer to someone over here, in software development you can start designing first a "hut", and then, as you advance in the project you can refactor, add or delete code (which is just an architectural plan) to support a bigger system (first a two story house, then a 10-story building, then your skyscrapper)