FBI’s Outdated 1995 Criminal Records System
The FBI’s 1995 criminal records system was outdated at launch, showing how slow, waterfall methods can leave technology obsolete and users behind. …
TL;DR; The FBI’s Sentinel project failed after years and massive spending using a traditional waterfall approach, delivering nothing. Switching to a small, focused Agile team produced a working product in a year at a fraction of the cost. Consider adopting iterative methods to avoid wasted time and resources and deliver real value sooner.

The FBI’s Sentinel project was textbook waterfall. Big budget. Big bang. Zero value delivered after four years and hundreds of millions spent.
The solution? Throw it out. Build a basement Scrum Studio. Hand-pick 40 people. Give them space to work iteratively.
Within a year: $30 million. Working product.
Agile didn’t just save the project, it exposed the insanity of pretending waterfall ever worked at this scale.
If you’re still defending your 18-month Gantt chart, ask yourself: what would your stakeholders say after four years and nothing in production?
That’s not control. That’s negligence.
Each classification [Concepts, Categories, & Tags] was assigned using AI-powered semantic analysis and scored across relevance, depth, and alignment. Final decisions? Still human. Always traceable. Hover to see how it applies.
If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.
We partner with businesses across diverse industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, engineering, transportation, hospitality, entertainment, legal, government, and military sectors.

DFDS

Qualco

Deliotte

Jack Links

ALS Life Sciences

Graham & Brown

YearUp.org

Boeing

Kongsberg Maritime

Lean SA

Alignment Healthcare

Big Data for Humans

Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd

Genus Breeding Ltd

MacDonald Humfrey (Automation) Ltd.

Slicedbread

Schlumberger

Akaditi

Washington Department of Transport

Department of Work and Pensions (UK)

Nottingham County Council

New Hampshire Supreme Court

Washington Department of Enterprise Services

Ghana Police Service

Capita Secure Information Solutions Ltd

Hubtel Ghana

Lockheed Martin

Schlumberger

Illumina

Philips