I saw it worked (& not worked) in the project I was last in.
What worked:
- As the business was not very clear on what exactly they wanted, this approach gave them the opportunity to experiment (with some boundaries and guidance of course). In the end, nothing beats having something you can see/play to work with, regardless of how rudiment it is.
- Writing requirements with focus on the 'WHY' gave the entire team perspective of what the business value or goals that we were trying to achieve. This is very underrated IMO.
- It promoted a lot more ownership and transparency among the working teams.
What did not work:
- Ceremonies for the sake of ceremonies
- Little to no planning (i guess this came down to the team's maturity of understanding Agile practices. We needed planning but at a shorter horizon)
- Delivering via Agile practice is challenging if the rest of the organisation are not supportive or not ready for such approach. For example, we needed more engagement time with SMEs but their line managers were not supportive of this. Example 2, Finance had a fixed price view and demanded very clear deliverables/artecfacts and stage gates.
- It is a lot more work than what people expect (eg. more engagement, more rework/refactoring, more introspective activites)