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It often strikes me that techniques such as Agile through its use of a rapid protyping strategy is very in tune with how developers think and can organically grow a solution. Essentially mixing planning with research and development.

The problem is that particularly with very inventive ground breaking new projects, Management want timescales as to when the solution will be delivered, often many months ahead. Developers often perceive this as unreasonable - but managers do have a genuine need for reliable estimates. For example they may have to schedule trade shows or arrange user group conferences around the new project which often for practical reasons (say securing a large enough venue) have to be done a long time in advance.

So given the iterative nature of agile and the way that each new calculated timescale is only a successive approximation to the truth - how can you quote a timescale up front - that you can rely on and that will allow the rest of your business to coordinate its activities with you?