Agile techniques help you herd cats. Waterfall methodologies help cats herd you.

A friend of mine is working on a project that is sticking with a waterfall methodology in the face of constantly changing requirements. They seem to be stuck in analysis paralysis, though they are making forward progress and taking positive steps to achieve closure on requirements sign off. I think they should be using agile techniques, or at least prototyping. From what I hear, it appears the problem is that higher up is sticking with waterfall in order to reduce their risk, forgetting that their duty is to reduce my friend's company's risk by using the best methods. The development team should quickly implement a vertical slice of functionality under the current style guidelines and provide it to the stakeholders. Once they see what they've got, they'll realize what they really want.

They should be playing to win; instead, it seems they're playing not to lose.