Most companies don't do that much of a regular demo to customers anyways - turns out most customers aren't even interested for the first 30-50% of the project, then they become mildly amused, until the final 80% - that's they start getting incredibly interested and opinionated.

> Agile as "devs can do what they want" never really existed ;-)

No real agile ever really exists in the end :)

But it's not devs not doing "what they want" that bothers me - it's the absurdly over-planned project estimates and timelines, with every detail of the project being specced out, not a lot of margin room for errors, invoking the name of "agile principles" as a way to deal with exactly things the PM's don't want to deal with in that moment.

I'd be fine with some degree of planning ahead, or starting with prototypes/PoC's, but such a huge part of the industry just chunks it into "same boat but we'll put agile stickers on the holes", and there is a whole industry of ceremonies around it, that it breaks the "core principles" of agile.

What a beautiful irony have we built :)