The FBI Sentinel project was textbook waterfall

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.

Published on 11 June 2025

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

1 minute read

https://nkdagility.com/resources/iXdW5l5qVvR

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.

Also published on: LinkedIn

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