FBI’s Outdated 1995 Criminal Records System
The FBI’s 1995 criminal records system was outdated at launch, showing how slow, waterfall methods can leave technology obsolete and users behind.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.
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