The biggest issue, as already stated, that I too have experienced is the lack of buy in. It is very difficult to get people to truly become vested in the process.
The other issue, which is also one that directly contributes to the above issue, and also in a large part one of the founding causes of Agile is the lack of management to stick to the outlines of the manifesto of Agile.
In Scrum, Lean, or whatever version of Agile you are working with one cannot break from the manifesto points. If a process is being used to break away from those priorities then most likely the management is screwing up and the buy in will fall apart. The manifesto MUST be followed:
Manifesto:
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan
Some scenarios might be when a gantt chart appears from one of the above processes for whatever reason. Gantt charts can be useful, but if all of a sudden a developer is reviewing a gantt chart with management, the last point is broken. Responding to change has slowed because encouragement of the plan is being favored over change. Instead a board with stickies should be used, simplify what is on the board with only the current working items and back burner items. This makes changes easy. Once anything is solidified in a "tool" it slows responding to changes. Sure, management needs to record and track things in some ways, but pushing that onto development only slows the responding to change, and pushing tools onto developers (unless they want them for development and can utilize them appropriately) messes up the first point, of the individuals over tools and process.
In another way, don't stop development for the purpose of writing comprehensive documentation. Unless you only have a single developer, then someone should take the documentation load autonomously from the development role. Pushing these things together drastically slows development and for periods of time, can shut down any effort to actually get working software.
The last point, is to always, ALWAYS stay in contact in some way with the customer or prospective customer. Talk to them regularly about what they want. Talk to them daily and show them as much as you can of UI, or even data flow work. Anything that they would understand they should see. Talk to them, educate them about the architecture and ideas going into the application and never forget that you are building the application for them.
Summary:
Biggest issue is buy in. Second is management sticking to the manifesto guidelines.
If you can mitigate these two risks, you should be good to go. Anything else is cakewalk after getting buy in and getting management to understand that they'll need to be truly strong, and non-micro management managers. Specifically, managers might even need to become leads, or fill a different style of role.
...hope I didn't stray off point too much. :)
