Predictability and the Agile Boundary

Most organizations can use the looser approaches described in this chapter most of the time and meet their business purposes. Some organizations have higher needs for predictability and need the stricter approaches.

Some Agile purists will complain that elaborating the product backlog to the degree needed to support fine-grain story pointing up front is “not Agile.” But the goal isn’t simply to be Agile (at least not if you care about the topic of this chapter). The goal is to use Agile practices and other practices to support the objectives and strategies of your business, including predictability, if that’s what your business needs. As shown in the illustration below, the “Agile boundary” concept described in in the “What’s Really Different About Agile?” chapter is useful here.