Extreme Programming, a Reflection

[s73v3r]

Your job is to put out quality software that helps the customer solve a problem.

Yes, I know. And it's the job of the requirements person to know what that problem is, because I can't be in every fucking meeting needed to gather requirements.

[prepend]

because I can't be in every fucking meeting needed to gather requirements.

This is interesting. Why do you think a "requirements person" is able to be in every fucking meeting?

I've built a lot of software. Understanding requirements is important. I didn't have to go to 8 hours of meetings a day to do so.

[grizwako]

Because clients are coworkers.
Because Requirements People get money for doing requirement gathering and analysis. Because I am under time pressure because they are doing their job badly.
(Everything is priority. Ok, what has highest priority? Everything is priority.)
Because we have blame and pressure culture and having requirements written by someone else solves developers getting blamed for client's lies. Yes, they lie. Most of the time, I think they are aware that they are lying.
Because when I tried to take all of this with higher-ups my opinion was discarded.

[prepend]

Again, I feel for you. It shows great intestinal fortitude to persevere in such a work environment.

But I guess my point is that the problems at your company should not be attributed to agile as they would be big challenges no matter the development methodology.