> the difference in the waterfall and non-waterfall shops was the extent to which executives preferred a sense of ultimate control
So you're saying that the reason shops have moved to agile is because executives have changed their psychology and are now far more comfortable with relinquishing control than in the past? Hard to accept.
What's much easier to accept is that communication tools have reduced the cost of changing specs and building consensus, allowing the same number of people to make far more changes in the same amount of time with the same amount of effort.
The incentives of an executive (or generally, of a human) haven't changed for a few thousand years.
> So you're saying that the reason shops have moved to agile is because executives have changed their psychology and are now far more comfortable with relinquishing control than in the past?
I am explicitly not saying that. In fact, the very next sentence from the one you quote is agreeing that the variation in psychology has not changed.
If you finish reading that paragraph, you'll see I'm saying what changed is consumer expectation given the rise of the Internet. People were ok with new versions every 18 months when they had to come in the mail and be manually installed. But the web got people used to frequent improvements and fast responsiveness. This caused pressure on executives to shift at least to mini-waterfall.
That change in expectations has differing impact based on the industry, and how much executives are isolated from that. Large companies with captive customers can more easily get away with longer waterfall processes, especially when the product is for an internal audience that can't switch tools. Startups and consumer-focused products tend to feel the pressure more, and so stick with much shorter cycles, some of them even doing what I'd consider true Agile.
So in sum, I'm saying some shops became Agile and many more just went to mini-waterfall with Scrum labels, the variation being partly due to the existing psychological and cultural variation, but mainly due to the extent to which customers and/or users demanded more responsiveness.
So you're saying that the reason shops have moved to agile is because executives have changed their psychology and are now far more comfortable with relinquishing control than in the past? Hard to accept.
What's much easier to accept is that communication tools have reduced the cost of changing specs and building consensus, allowing the same number of people to make far more changes in the same amount of time with the same amount of effort.
The incentives of an executive (or generally, of a human) haven't changed for a few thousand years.