Agile Requirements Up-front [closed]

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I understand that it is better to discover requirements through iterative approaches in Agile, however I often hear of people rejecting projects on the basis that they are given up-front requirements.

Why is this the case? Why can't up-front requirements just be taken as-is, e.g. just added to a product backlog and then prioritized and implemented?

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There's nothing wrong with up-front requirements. In fact it helps to know where you're heading before you set sail!

Agile is a lot about being able to be adaptable, so that should requirements change you're not locked into something you don't want.

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The kind of up front requirements that would cause a developer to think twice about a project, would be those which indicate that the client are likely to be a nightmare to work with:

• an obsession with one particular, unsuitable technology or presentation style
• insisting on 'security' with glaringly obvious vulnerabilities

In an agile project, it's good to show a client the current state of the partially working system at an early stage, and get feedback, using this information to help design the subsequent parts of the system. If a client is too fixed on ideas of the final product then they might not be able to give useful feedback at this stage, and the final product may be not as good as it could have been.

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This something that can be quite problematic with Agile. Some teams will use it as an excuse to not have a plan as they want to be 'adaptable'. Requirements can help to focus on the software architecture, which is something else that is not always given much focus in some Agile teams. It is points like these that lead me to believe that Agile should just be principles but not a methodology. Digital Animal wrote an interesting article about how Agile can be used in such a way that it stops being effective. For some teams, it is better to learn from what is great about Agile and use it to build a methodology that works for them. http://digitalanimal.com/blog/slaying-the-agile-dragon-the-game-of-thrones-methodology/?AT=CZcb6f