“Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.” – Agile Principle #8
Software teams that develop products in a waterfall style can turn into “death marches” at the end — and hardware teams that operate under the same flawed model end up in “production hell.”
This means that the accumulation of missed requirements and design flaws have turned into a cascade of late-found defects that have overwhelmed the team. They are behind schedule — often months or even years late. The pressure to deliver is overwhelming — and it breaks people, even if they don’t talk about it openly.