Trying to implement Scrum in a $VBC is even more fun, especially when senior management are so entrenched with waterfall based processes where there is much more information (almost) set in stone upfront/earlier.

"What are you going to commit to delivering in this project?"

"points This stuff is pretty much guaranteed, unless you change your minds on the priorities."

"But that's only about 40% of the dev time we've got until our planned release date[1]."

"Yes, that's all we can commit to definitely doing. They'll be more, don't worry, but what depends on what the priorities become at a later date and where we get led with customer feedback[2]."

"But I can't go to my management team with this, they won't understand why we're not committing to much!"

"They should understand, they told us to do Agile in the first place[3]"

Project starts...

"Can I get copies of the detailed design docs?"

"We don't have any detailed design docs, you can have a look at the design docs we've got but just remember that they're 'Barely Good Enough'."

"But I can't go to...[4]"

1. Ok, we can handle an upfront release date.

2. Ha, like we'll be able to get any of that.

3. With little or no actual understanding of how it works. But it's a nice buzzword to spray around with customers...

4. etc, etc, etc