Oh, my impression is that there's many iterative approaches to writing code (and doing other things besides). All of them work for a while, and then either someone "simplifies" out the iteration part, or in some way they render the iterative part toothless.
Basically you end up with something resembling a cargo cult, with all the rituals still there, but the tightly coupled feedback loop is missing.
Quick question: There's some sort of minor UAT ~once a week (or per whatever your cycle is), RIGHT? And then you find out umpteen things wrong (with the software and with the specs) , and you fix them; RIGHT?
If you have an actual commissioning or final UAT at the end of your project, it's just a formality with cake RIGHT?
Else how is that even agile? :-P
I yeah, I’m holding it wrong that’s the problem. Agile suffers from the “no true Scotsman” fallacy to a massive extent. If the methodology was any good nobody would be arguing whether they were doing it wrong or not.
My contention is not “holding it wrong”, my contention is that it’s irredeemably flawed because the nature of it puts 99% of the actual (not fabricated) work and responsibility solely on developers, making the project manages and BA useless noise you have to fight just to get anything finished.