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More Agile debunking please!

A bunch of strawman crap. True a customer never knows what he wants when you start out, but nowhere does he mention how a long runup and process fixes this.

Is he advocating a long runup and heavy process, though? Not in this article, anyway; I haven't read anything else yet.

The point there was that either the customer, the developer, or both need to manage the requirements. The customer will have no idea what kind of effort and money is involved in implementing the requirements they're imagining (at whatever level of detail), nor will they realize all of the choices involved in that implementation, and if you don't go into sufficient depth in requirements, you're going to have a problem.

This is still compatible with defining a very limited range of requirements for a first iteration, with much looser ideas of where you're headed after that (a very valuable aspect of the agile concept).

I know what you mean by strawmen, though -- I think he makes some good points, but he's wrong to call these "sacred cows"... they're questioned all the friggin' time.

this is just not a very good article. poorly written, arguable points, and no supporting data.