The Day That Agile Died

Today I am in mourning. It's rather sad. I was told yesterday by my management, that we're going with waterfall rather than Agile.

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Give me a minute...
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I received an email yesterday to tell me that I'll be assigned a task soon to update our teams SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) document. If I understand the reasons right, this needs to be done in order to meet "audit" requirements.

I am the author of my teams current SDLC document (written about 2 years ago). It was written as an agile methodology, packed with things such as User Stories, Iterations, Agile Planning, Development Velocity, Iteration Burndown, etc. The document describes how our team can be agile internally while still being able to work with other non-agile teams effectively. I was, and still am, very proud of this document and believe that this process can still work.

I fully acknowledge that the team isn't following the SDLC accurately, and I understand that we aren't meeting "audit" requirements because we're not following the SDLC, but what is the right approach here? Fix the process to better align with the SDLC or rewrite the SDLC to document our currently broken process?

The email that I received was short and to the point saying that I need to update the SDLC to meet audit requirements. My response to that email stated that we're not exactly following our current SDLC and that there are many non-agile things being done. I inquired as to which direction I should take on the rewrite of this document: Waterfall or Agile?

The response was devastating. Simply put, I was told to make it Waterfall.

That's not exactly the answer I wanted nor what I was expecting. Is that really the right approach? To me, this feels like we're taking a huge step back in our process. The only reason to change from Agile to Waterfall is that the people making the decisions are just falling back to what they know.

The more I stewed about this lastnight, the more furious and insulted I got about this situation. Yes, insulted. I am the biggest supporter/promoter/evangelist of agile on our team and they want me to change the document from Agile to Waterfall, not to mention the fact that it was the document that I wrote.

This is a huge to me. I joined this team with the promise of using an agile methodology. I am not, and never have been, comfortable in a waterfall setting. Honestly, I get lost with waterfall. There's never enough communication, there are too many documents that become deprecated quickly, the list goes on.

I am going to attempt to change opinions on this, so we'll see..