JP Rangaswami on Agile

[from How risk management affects agile approaches]

[…] people act as if they know the risks they face despite not knowing them; they then disparage people who act to discover and potentially mitigate hitherto unknown risks

I have been working with a client — and I hope to turn this into a sanitized case study at /Work — who has little experience with agile techniques. JP’s observation characterizes the frustration I have had in the project at every turn. I have no idea how many times I had to point out to the CEO of that company that he was asking me, or the development partner, to provide certainties about the unknowable. He had no deep trust in either the process of Agile, and neither did he accept the principle that downstream realities could not be foretold.