<i>If you wanted to do some home renovations and somebody told you they had no idea how much it would cost to do until they started working on it, you might be uncomfortable.</i><p>Right and this why I say that so many people are (intentionally or not) misunderstanding what &quot;agile&quot; means, and selling something else using that label.  Look at what the Agile Manifesto actually says about plans &#x2F; planning and what not:<p><pre><code>    Through this work we have come to value:
    ...
    Responding to change over following a plan
    ...
    That is, while there is value in the items on
    the right, we value the items on the left more
</code></pre>
So, all those people out there acting like &quot;being agile&quot; justifies operating with no plan at all, are NOT really in alignment with the core principles of agile. Agile does not prescribe &quot;no planning&quot; and never has.  What this was all in reaction to, was the idea of BDUF (Big Design Up Front) and the concept of spending huge amounts of time building models and creating artifacts which, in and of themselves, delivered no value to the customer - and furthermore, were likely to be changed anyway.<p>If &quot;agile has failed&quot; is really true, then here&#x27;s the one place where it probably failed: It was never prescriptive enough.  Which might seem paradoxical, but the problem is, the AM is subjective enough that people could find justification for whatever bullshit ideas they came up with, in the Manifesto.   :-(