>If your clients don't buy into the concept of velocity, etc, and are not willing to make trade offs on deliverables, it will fail miserably also.

That's a good point. And I wanted to mention that general message to Craig as my only comment, when he provided the LinkedIn link to his video on the software development process . Specifically, in the phase where someone sits down with the client and maps out how they work. If they don't buy in, if they don't make the commitment (or if they don't truly realize what commitment they're making), there will definitely be problems down the road. Someone has to be able to read the other person across the table when they're secretly just thinking, "sure, sure, fine, whatever, let's go". Those are skills you'll usually find only in people who have made the mistakes and have learned from it.

Politics aside....the entire AHCA software system mess has enough content to write an entire book that would probably sell even more than "The Mythical Man-Month". Successful systems need good project management - whatever the methodology - and what we just saw will go down in history as one major cluster-____.

And sadly, since many companies send in account managers to negotiate with clients - and given that many (not all) account managers are little more than flunkees who wear fancy suits, know how to use buzzwords, but lack all the other "soft-skills" - you've got a recipe for major issues.