I might have read it wrong, but I read OP as saying something like "people want to do agile, but wait until the project is perfect, thereby negating the whole point".
Like the sibling comment here, I've seen this plenty of times too. Not on "most projects" or "most places", but certainly on most spectacular failures I've witnessed.
I don't think the one who's seen "hundreds" of examples could have done so without being an "Agile coach" or something, maybe a temporary contractor at most, either way getting a pretty arms-length look at how a team is operating or is starting to adopt a new procedure.
Not so much the overall project, but definitely the smaller components within an ongoing project. Probably should have specified that because I'm almost always working on an established thing, rather than a greenfield thing.
